SortStack #1334 — 2030-02-02

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. One year on Mercury (a full orbit of the Sun) 88 days

   Mercury's spin is so slow that a single sunrise-to-sunrise day there lasts about two of its years — you could outwalk its sunset.

3. The 1900 Paris Olympic Games 167 days

   Spread thinly through the World's Fair, the Games were so disorganized that some winners died never knowing they had been Olympians.

4. NASA's Perseverance rover travelling from Earth to Mars 203 days

   The 480-million-km cruise ended with the 'seven minutes of terror' landing — and the rover carried a small helicopter, Ingenuity, strapped to its belly.

5. A horse's pregnancy 340 days

   Foals can stand within an hour of birth and gallop within a day — a survival feature for a prey animal born on open grassland.

6. The Hundred Years' War between England and France 116.6 years

   Despite the name, it lasted 116 years (1337-1453), punctuated by long truces — and technically England and France stayed at war on paper even longer.

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