SortStack #2153 — 2032-05-01

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. 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.

2. A performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony 74 min

   Legend says the CD was designed to hold 74 minutes specifically so the Ninth would fit on a single disc — a Sony executive's favourite piece.

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. An evening at Wagner's opera 'Götterdämmerung', intervals included 5.5 h

   It's only the finale: the full Ring cycle spans four operas over about 15 hours of music, and devotees attend all four nights in a row.

5. A flight from London to New York 8.2 h

   Flying west against the jet stream adds about an hour versus the return leg — eastbound flights have surfed the tailwind to under 5 hours.

6. The Apollo 13 mission, launch to splashdown 6 days

   After the oxygen tank exploded, the crew used the lunar module as a lifeboat and slingshotted around the Moon — NASA's 'successful failure'.

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