SortStack #732 — 2028-06-10

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. One full rotation of Earth on its axis 23.9 h

   A true rotation takes 23 hours 56 minutes — the extra 4 minutes of our day come from Earth also moving along its orbit and needing to catch up to the Sun.

2. Randy Gardner's world record for staying awake 11 days

   The 17-year-old's 1964 science-fair stunt of 11 sleepless days still stands — Guinness stopped certifying attempts as too dangerous.

3. A periodical cicada's life cycle, egg to final emergence 17 years

   They spend 17 years underground and mere weeks in the sun — the prime-numbered cycle may have evolved to dodge predators' breeding rhythms.

4. The Cold War 43.9 years

   Historians call it 'the long peace' — the superpowers never fought each other directly, but proxy wars touched nearly every continent.

5. The Republic of Venice 1.1K years

   The 1,100-year republic elected 120 doges using a bizarre multi-round lottery system specifically designed to prevent vote-rigging.

6. The time humans have lived in Australia 65K years

   Aboriginal Australians' roughly 65,000 years make theirs the oldest continuous culture on Earth — some oral histories describe coastlines drowned by rising seas 10,000 years ago.

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