SortStack #1866 — 2031-07-19

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. One heartbeat of a hummingbird in flight 48 ms

   Hummingbird hearts can hit 1,260 beats per minute in flight, then crash to about 50 at night when the bird enters a hibernation-like torpor.

3. A football (soccer) match, regulation time 90 min

   The ball is typically in play for barely 55 of those minutes — which is why competitions now add increasingly enormous stoppage time.

4. Yuri Gagarin's entire Vostok 1 spaceflight 108 min

   The first human spaceflight was a single orbit — and Gagarin ejected and parachuted down separately from his capsule, landing in a potato field.

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. Roman rule over Britain 366.9 years

   Rome governed Britain for 367 years — longer than the entire history of the United States — before abandoning it to defend Italy.

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