SortStack #921 — 2028-12-16

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. 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.

2. Holi, the Hindu festival of colours 2 days

   It opens with the Holika bonfire at night and erupts into colour-throwing the next day — the powders were traditionally made from flowers and herbs.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. The Hundred Years' War between England and France 116.6 years

   Despite the name, it lasted 116 years (1337-1453), punctuated by long truces — and technically England and France stayed at war on paper even longer.

6. 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.

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