SortStack #2370 — 2032-12-04
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- 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.
- The men's 100 m freestyle world record swim 46.4 sec
Pan Zhanle's 46.40 at Paris 2024 stunned the field — he won by over a second, an eternity in a sprint event decided by fingernails.
- Cooking a perfect soft-boiled egg 4.5 min
At high altitude it takes noticeably longer — water boils below 100°C up a mountain, which is why mountaineers complain about their eggs.
- The first circumnavigation of the globe (Magellan's expedition) 3 years
Magellan himself never made it — he was killed in the Philippines. Just 18 of the original ~270 crew limped home aboard one remaining ship.
- The era of the Crusades, from the first to the fall of Acre 194.9 years
Nine major crusades spanned 195 years — and the Fourth never reached the Holy Land at all, sacking Christian Constantinople instead.
- The Holy Roman Empire, from Otto the Great to its dissolution 844 years
Voltaire quipped it was 'neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire' — yet it lasted 844 years before Napoleon finished it off in 1806.