SortStack #2125 — 2032-04-03

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. a-ha's 'Take On Me' 3.8 min

   The Norwegian band recorded it three times before it became a hit — the famous pencil-sketch video took 16 weeks of rotoscoping by hand.

3. A Eurostar train journey from London to Paris 2.3 h

   Only about 20 minutes of the trip is actually under the sea — the Channel Tunnel remains the longest undersea rail tunnel in the world.

4. 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.

5. Munich's Oktoberfest 17 days

   Despite the name, most of it happens in September — and visitors drink roughly six to seven million litres of beer before it ends.

6. 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.

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