SortStack #2097 — 2032-03-06
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- A Formula 1 pit stop to change all four tyres 2 sec
McLaren set the world record at 1.80 seconds in Qatar 2023 — around twenty mechanics working in a window shorter than a heartbeat-and-a-half.
- La Tomatina, Spain's giant tomato fight 60 min
Around 120 tonnes of overripe tomatoes are hurled in Buñol each August; a firework marks the end and the streets are hosed down within hours.
- 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.
- One full rotation of Earth on its axis 23.9 h
A true rotation takes 23 hours 56 minutes — the extra 4 minutes of our day come from Earth also moving along its orbit and needing to catch up to the Sun.
- 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.
- 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.