SortStack #1208 — 2029-09-29

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896 38 min

   History's shortest war: the Royal Navy shelled the palace at 9:02 am, the sultan fled to the German consulate, and it was all over before 10.

2. The Titanic's sinking, from iceberg to going under 2.7 h

   The ship's band famously kept playing on deck for most of it — and the iceberg itself had likely calved from a Greenland glacier years earlier.

3. Rio de Janeiro's Carnival, official festival period 5 days

   Around two million people hit the streets per day, and the samba school parade is a fierce contest judged on dozens of criteria.

4. The construction of the Empire State Building 1.1 years

   Crews added roughly four and a half storeys per week, finishing ahead of schedule and under budget during the Great Depression.

5. The time since Vesuvius buried Pompeii 1.9K years

   The AD 79 ash preserved loaves of bread still sitting in ovens — one carbonized loaf even bears its baker's stamp.

6. The age of the oldest known figurative cave painting (Sulawesi) 51.1K years

   The Indonesian rock art depicts wild pigs and human-like figures — painted tens of thousands of years before Lascaux's famous bulls.

← All puzzles · Play today’s SortStack