SortStack #319 — 2027-04-24

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A single round of professional boxing 3 min

   Round length was standardized by the 1867 Queensberry Rules, which also introduced gloves — before that, bare-knuckle rounds ended only with a knockdown.

2. Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday 46 days

   It's famously a 40-day fast, but the calendar span is 46 days — Sundays are feast days and traditionally don't count.

3. Mike the Headless Chicken's life after losing his head 1.5 years

   The 1945 axe missed Mike's brain stem; fed by eyedropper, he toured sideshows and his Colorado hometown still throws him an annual festival.

4. The Berlin Wall standing, from construction to fall 28.2 years

   Since 2018, the Wall has been down longer than it ever stood — and more of it now sits in museums worldwide than in Berlin.

5. The Holy Roman Empire, from Otto the Great to its dissolution 844 years

   Voltaire quipped it was 'neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire' — yet it lasted 844 years before Napoleon finished it off in 1806.

6. The time since humans invented the wheel 5.5K years

   Potter's wheels came before wheels for transport — and the oldest wooden wheel ever found, near Ljubljana, is about 5,150 years old.

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