SortStack #1453 — 2030-06-01

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. An average human's reaction to a starting gun 252 ms

   Athletics rules treat any sprint start faster than 100 milliseconds as a false start — it's considered humanly impossible to react that quickly.

2. The Woodstock music festival of 1969 2.8 days

   Billed as '3 days of peace & music', it overran badly — Jimi Hendrix closed at 9 am on Monday to a field mostly littered with sleeping bags.

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. An African elephant's pregnancy 1.8 years

   The longest gestation of any land mammal produces a 100 kg calf that can walk within hours — and is looked after by the whole herd.

5. Voyager 1's journey from launch to interstellar space 35 years

   It carries a golden record with greetings in 55 languages and Chuck Berry — and it still phones home daily on a 1970s 8-track-era computer.

6. The Romanov dynasty's rule over Russia 304 years

   It began with a 16-year-old reluctantly accepting the throne in 1613 and ended 304 years later with Nicholas II's abdication in 1917.

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