SortStack #256 — 2027-02-20

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. One human heartbeat at rest 798 ms

   Your heart beats roughly 100,000 times a day and around 3 billion times in a lifetime, pumping enough blood to fill an Olympic pool several times over.

2. An amber traffic light before it turns red 4 sec

   Amber phases are tuned to road speed — typically 3 seconds in town and up to 6 on fast roads, calculated from braking distance physics.

3. A proper hand wash, by WHO guidelines 19.8 sec

   The recommended scrub lasts about as long as singing 'Happy Birthday' twice — most people manage barely a third of it.

4. A performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony 74 min

   Legend says the CD was designed to hold 74 minutes specifically so the Ninth would fit on a single disc — a Sony executive's favourite piece.

5. 'Logistics', the longest film ever made 35.7 days

   The Swedish experimental film follows a pedometer's supply chain in reverse, in real time, from a Stockholm shop back to a Chinese factory.

6. The time since Vesuvius buried Pompeii 1.9K years

   The AD 79 ash preserved loaves of bread still sitting in ovens — one carbonized loaf even bears its baker's stamp.

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