SortStack #941 — 2029-01-05
By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.
- A pack of instant ramen noodles $0.40
In a Japanese poll, instant ramen was voted the country's greatest invention of the twentieth century — beating karaoke and the Walkman.
- A dozen red roses from a florist $55
Most US roses are flown in from Colombia and Ecuador — around Valentine's Day, cargo jets full of nothing but flowers land in Miami daily.
- A bespoke suit from Savile Row in London $5.5K
A true bespoke suit takes around 50 hours of handwork and multiple fittings. The word 'bespoke' itself comes from Savile Row — cloth 'spoken for' by a customer.
- A Rolls-Royce Phantom, before options $517K
Each Phantom's 'Starlight Headliner' is hand-threaded with hundreds of fiber-optic stars — buyers can order the exact night sky from a date of their choosing.
- The record bluefin tuna sold at Tokyo's New Year fish auction $3.1M
The 278 kg fish was bought in 2019 by a sushi chain owner known as the 'Tuna King' — the first auction of the year is partly a publicity ritual.
- The entire Apollo Moon program, in the dollars of its day $25.4B
At its peak, Apollo employed about 400,000 people and consumed more than 4% of the US federal budget — per landing, each Moon mission cost less than a modern aircraft carrier.