text: In the 15th and 16th centuries, two sleeps were all the rage. People would go to sleep when they ran out of work to do, often at sundown, and then would wake up from this "first sleep" around midnight to do things like pray, write, or visit neighbors. Some doctors even thought the best time to conceive was during the mid-sleep break. They'd then go right back to sleep and wake up at dawn. The two sleeps became less popular in the late 17th century, and by the 1920s, people stopped doing it altogether.