SortStack #739 — 2028-06-17

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. The men's 100 m freestyle world record swim 46.4 sec

   Pan Zhanle's 46.40 at Paris 2024 stunned the field — he won by over a second, an eternity in a sprint event decided by fingernails.

2. The elevator ride up the Burj Khalifa's observation deck 1 min

   The lifts climb at around 10 metres per second. Your ears pop on the way to the 124th floor — the building is so tall it has distinct climate zones.

3. Sunlight travelling from the Sun's surface to Earth 8.3 min

   If the Sun vanished right now, we'd keep seeing it — and orbiting it — for another 8 minutes and 20 seconds before noticing anything.

4. A Eurostar train journey from London to Paris 2.3 h

   Only about 20 minutes of the trip is actually under the sea — the Channel Tunnel remains the longest undersea rail tunnel in the world.

5. Alcock and Brown's first nonstop transatlantic flight 16 h

   The 1919 crossing ended nose-first in an Irish bog they mistook for a meadow. Brown had climbed onto the wings mid-flight to chip off ice.

6. NASA's Perseverance rover travelling from Earth to Mars 203 days

   The 480-million-km cruise ended with the 'seven minutes of terror' landing — and the rover carried a small helicopter, Ingenuity, strapped to its belly.

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