SortStack #2874 — 2034-04-22
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- One heartbeat of a hummingbird in flight 48 ms
Hummingbird hearts can hit 1,260 beats per minute in flight, then crash to about 50 at night when the bird enters a hibernation-like torpor.
- A single blink of the human eye 348 ms
We blink around 15-20 times a minute, and the brain edits out the darkness — you're effectively blind for about 10% of your waking hours.
- 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 1900 Paris Olympic Games 167 days
Spread thinly through the World's Fair, the Games were so disorganized that some winners died never knowing they had been Olympians.
- The Cold War 43.9 years
Historians call it 'the long peace' — the superpowers never fought each other directly, but proxy wars touched nearly every continent.
- One orbit of Pluto around the Sun 247.9 years
Pluto hasn't completed a single orbit since its discovery in 1930 — it won't finish its first 'observed year' until 2178.