SortStack #2615 — 2033-08-06

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A car airbag inflating after a crash 30 ms

   The bag must fully inflate before your head arrives — roughly ten times faster than the blink of an eye, driven by a controlled chemical explosion.

2. One swing of a grandfather clock's pendulum 1 sec

   A pendulum about one metre long swings in almost exactly one second — a coincidence so neat it was once proposed as the definition of the metre.

3. A full-term human pregnancy 280 days

   Only about 4% of babies arrive on their due date — and the classic count starts from before conception even happens.

4. The construction of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona (so far) 143.9 years

   Begun in 1882 and still unfinished, it only received an official building permit in 2019 — Gaudí said 'my client is not in a hurry'.

5. The time since Vesuvius buried Pompeii 1.9K years

   The AD 79 ash preserved loaves of bread still sitting in ovens — one carbonized loaf even bears its baker's stamp.

6. The time since humans invented the wheel 5.5K years

   Potter's wheels came before wheels for transport — and the oldest wooden wheel ever found, near Ljubljana, is about 5,150 years old.

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