SortStack #1558 — 2030-09-14
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- One swing of a grandfather clock's pendulum 1 sec
A pendulum about one metre long swings in almost exactly one second — a coincidence so neat it was once proposed as the definition of the metre.
- The men's 100 m freestyle world record swim 46.4 sec
Pan Zhanle's 46.40 at Paris 2024 stunned the field — he won by over a second, an eternity in a sprint event decided by fingernails.
- The Epsom Derby, Britain's most famous horse race 2.5 min
Workforce's 2010 record run covered the mile and a half at over 56 km/h — and the race has been run every year since 1780, even through both World Wars.
- The Isner-Mahut match, the longest in tennis history 11.1 h
The 2010 Wimbledon first-rounder stretched over three days with a 70-68 final set — the scoreboard wasn't programmed to go that high and broke.
- 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.
- How long the Parthenon has been standing 2.5K years
It survived largely intact for over 2,000 years — until 1687, when a Venetian shell hit the gunpowder the Ottomans had stored inside.