For a large portion of the world, there are two exceptions to the standard 24-hour day; a 23-hour day in late winter or early spring, and a 25-hour day in autumn. In the U.S. we learn to adjust the clocks at 2:00 a.m. In the autumn we essentially experience that time twice… once when the clock first strikes 2, and an hour later when it strikes 2 again. Meanwhile, in the spring, the hour between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. disappears. So the song is a reflection on this time warping practice, and the fact that there is nothing more valuable than time.

Jiroemon Kimura died of natural causes in a hospital in his hometown of Kyōtango, western Japan, at 2:08 a.m. on June 12, 2013. He was 116 years old.

Instead of musical notation, La Monte Young’s “Piano Piece for Terry Riley #1” has a simple set of instructions: "Push the piano up to a wall... Push as hard as you can... The piece is over when you are too exhausted to push any longer." The composition is dated, “2:10 A.M., November 8, 1960.”

Lillian Asplund, a survivor of the Titanic, kept silent about the tragedy for most of her life. But she kept a shoe box filled with items recovered from her father, who died that fateful day. Among the items in the box was her father’s watch, which was stopped at 2:19, one minute before the titanic sunk, and presumably the moment her father hit the water.

Carlos Hevia was the president of Cuba for less than 40 hours. After recognizing that his presidency was doomed before it began, he walked out of the presidential palace in the middle of the night, stating “I am going back to my cane fields to cut cane.” At around 2:20 a.m. he started making his way back to his home.

On February 25, 1942, air raid sirens sounded at 2:25 a.m. throughout Los Angeles County. A total blackout was ordered and a barrage of artillery lit up the night sky, trying to take down an unseen enemy. In the end, the military realized that there was no enemy.

At 2:32 a.m. on September 16, 1979, two families in East Germany took off in a homemade hot air balloon that they built in secret, in an attempt to escape the communist country by crossing the border to West Germany.

A YouTube video titled “Movie on 11 22 17 at 2 36 AM” shows an interview between two college students around the subject of social media and relationships. The interviewee recalls a relationship he was in that started out with a person he met through social media. The song is a fictionalized version of the relationship from the point of view of the other person, who is still slightly obsessed with the interviewee.

When Germans finally signed surrender papers in Reims, France, U.S. military were at a loss for words when attempting to properly memorialize the moment. General Eisenhower walked in the room, asked for a pen, and succinctly wrote, “The mission of this Allied Force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945.” The song is written from the point of view of citizens of four countries: U.S., in a celebratory mood; France, relieved with the end of the atrocities of war; Ukraine, having been displaced and not knowing if a return home is possible; and Greece, where suffering continues in the form of civil war.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry crashed a plane at 2:45 a.m. on December 30, 1935 in the Libyan desert as part of a race. Saint-Exupéry and his navigator survived the crash, only to face dehydration in the desert heat. Their only sustenance was a small amount of coffee, white wine, some grapes and an orange. Years later Saint-Exupéry would write the classic, The Little Prince, which begins with a pilot being stranded in the desert.

Using a sub-machine gun a man hijacked American Airlines Flight 119, on June 23, 1972. Not knowing whether they would survive the ordeal, flight crew and passengers alike endured until the hijacker jumped out of the plane the next day at 2:50 a.m.

On August 28, 2007 at 2:58 a.m., Paul Addis prematurely set the Burning Man effigy on fire, four days before it was scheduled to be ignited. Disillusioned by the commercialization of the festival, Addis was quoted as saying, “This was not an act of vengeance, it was one of love… a love of the ethos that is fading at Burning Man.”