SortStack #1901 — 2031-08-23

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A single wingbeat of a hovering hummingbird 12.6 ms

   Up to 80 wingbeats per second lets hummingbirds hover, fly backwards, and even fly upside down — no other bird can do all three.

2. A chameleon's tongue reaching its insect prey 72 ms

   Small chameleons have the fastest tongues, accelerating at hundreds of g — proportionally the most powerful movement of any reptile, bird, or mammal.

3. One human heartbeat at rest 798 ms

   Your heart beats roughly 100,000 times a day and around 3 billion times in a lifetime, pumping enough blood to fill an Olympic pool several times over.

4. The filming of Richard Linklater's 'Boyhood' 11.4 years

   The same cast reunited for a few days each year so the actors aged in real time — the lead grew from age six to eighteen on screen.

5. 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.

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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