SortStack #809 — 2028-08-26

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A football (soccer) match, regulation time 90 min

   The ball is typically in play for barely 55 of those minutes — which is why competitions now add increasingly enormous stoppage time.

2. The Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon's 'Battle of the Nations' 4 days

   With around 600,000 soldiers from over a dozen nations, the 1813 clash was Europe's largest battle until the First World War.

3. 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.

4. Voyager 1's journey from launch to interstellar space 35 years

   It carries a golden record with greetings in 55 languages and Chuck Berry — and it still phones home daily on a 1970s 8-track-era computer.

5. 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.

6. A photon's journey from the Sun's core to its surface 170K years

   Energy ricochets through the dense interior for on the order of 100,000 years — then crosses the void to Earth in barely eight minutes.

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