SortStack #1257 — 2029-11-17

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A camera speedlight flash firing at full power 1 ms

   At low power settings, flash bursts get even shorter — down to around 1/30,000 of a second, fast enough to freeze a bursting balloon mid-pop.

2. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe 25 days

   The world's largest arts festival stages over 3,000 shows — by ticket sales it trails only the Olympics and the football World Cup.

3. A full-term human pregnancy 280 days

   Only about 4% of babies arrive on their due date — and the classic count starts from before conception even happens.

4. The Ottoman Empire 622.7 years

   Founded before the printing press, it ended after the airplane — the empire spanned 623 years and three continents at its height.

5. 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.

6. Ancient Egyptian civilization, from unification to Cleopatra 3.1K years

   It ran so long that Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.

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