SortStack #704 — 2028-05-13

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A mantis shrimp throwing its famous punch 3 ms

   The strike accelerates like a bullet and creates collapsing cavitation bubbles that briefly flash with light and heat — prey gets hit twice by one punch.

2. James Cameron's film 'Titanic' 3.2 h

   The movie runs longer than the actual sinking it depicts — the real ship went down faster than you can watch it go down.

3. The world's longest scheduled flight, Singapore to New York 19 h

   The route covers about 15,300 km. The aircraft is configured with no economy class at all — partly so passengers survive the experience.

4. The Western Roman Empire, from Augustus to its fall 501.9 years

   After the West fell in AD 476, the Eastern half carried on for nearly a thousand more years as the Byzantine Empire.

5. How long the Hagia Sophia has been standing 1.5K years

   Built in just five years under Justinian, it has since served as cathedral, mosque, museum, and mosque again across nearly 1,500 years.

6. The time since the last woolly mammoths died out 4K years

   A dwarf population survived on Wrangel Island until about 2000 BC — meaning mammoths were alive while the Giza pyramids were already centuries old.

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