SortStack #2552 — 2033-06-04
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- The Islamic holy month of Ramadan 29.5 days
Because it follows the lunar calendar, Ramadan drifts about 11 days earlier each year — cycling through every season over 33 years.
- A periodical cicada's life cycle, egg to final emergence 17 years
They spend 17 years underground and mere weeks in the sun — the prime-numbered cycle may have evolved to dodge predators' breeding rhythms.
- Voyager 1's journey from launch to interstellar space 35 years
It carries a golden record with greetings in 55 languages and Chuck Berry — and it still phones home daily on a 1970s 8-track-era computer.
- 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.
- The age of the oldest known figurative cave painting (Sulawesi) 51.1K years
The Indonesian rock art depicts wild pigs and human-like figures — painted tens of thousands of years before Lascaux's famous bulls.
- A photon's journey from the Sun's core to its surface 170K years
Energy ricochets through the dense interior for on the order of 100,000 years — then crosses the void to Earth in barely eight minutes.