SortStack #1201 — 2029-09-22

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. a-ha's 'Take On Me' 3.8 min

   The Norwegian band recorded it three times before it became a hit — the famous pencil-sketch video took 16 weeks of rotoscoping by hand.

2. Yuri Gagarin's entire Vostok 1 spaceflight 108 min

   The first human spaceflight was a single orbit — and Gagarin ejected and parachuted down separately from his capsule, landing in a potato field.

3. A chicken egg's incubation, laying to hatching 21 days

   Chicks start cheeping to their mother through the shell a day or two before hatching — and she clucks back to encourage them out.

4. The construction of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona (so far) 143.9 years

   Begun in 1882 and still unfinished, it only received an official building permit in 2019 — Gaudí said 'my client is not in a hurry'.

5. The age of the Lascaux cave paintings 17K years

   Four teenagers and a dog named Robot found the caves in 1940 — visitor breath damaged the art so badly that today tourists see a replica.

6. The time humans have lived in Australia 65K years

   Aboriginal Australians' roughly 65,000 years make theirs the oldest continuous culture on Earth — some oral histories describe coastlines drowned by rising seas 10,000 years ago.

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