SortStack #1068 — 2029-05-12

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A proper hand wash, by WHO guidelines 19.8 sec

   The recommended scrub lasts about as long as singing 'Happy Birthday' twice — most people manage barely a third of it.

2. 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.

3. The average adult's actual night of sleep 6.8 h

   Smartphone-tracking studies put the global average well under the recommended eight hours — and humans sleep less than virtually any other primate.

4. Charles Lindbergh's solo flight from New York to Paris 33.5 h

   Lindbergh went without sleep so long he reported hallucinating ghostly figures in the cockpit somewhere over the Atlantic.

5. The Siege of Leningrad in World War II 2.4 years

   Through the blockade, scientists at the city's seed bank starved to death rather than eat their collection of edible seeds and potatoes.

6. The Holy Roman Empire, from Otto the Great to its dissolution 844 years

   Voltaire quipped it was 'neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire' — yet it lasted 844 years before Napoleon finished it off in 1806.

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