SortStack #438 — 2027-08-21

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A camera speedlight flash firing at full power 1 ms

   At low power settings, flash bursts get even shorter — down to around 1/30,000 of a second, fast enough to freeze a bursting balloon mid-pop.

2. Half-time in a football (soccer) match 15 min

   The break exists partly thanks to early English schools with different rules — teams switched codes at the interval when playing each other.

3. The Isner-Mahut match, the longest in tennis history 11.1 h

   The 2010 Wimbledon first-rounder stretched over three days with a 70-68 final set — the scoreboard wasn't programmed to go that high and broke.

4. The Woodstock music festival of 1969 2.8 days

   Billed as '3 days of peace & music', it overran badly — Jimi Hendrix closed at 9 am on Monday to a field mostly littered with sleeping bags.

5. The Wimbledon tennis championships 14 days

   The tournament's famous rest day, the 'Middle Sunday', was only abolished in 2022 after 145 years of tradition.

6. The Second World War 6 years

   From the invasion of Poland to Japan's surrender, it remains history's deadliest conflict — fighting officially ended on a battleship in Tokyo Bay.

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