SortStack #2986 — 2034-08-12

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A qualifying rodeo bull ride 8 sec

   Riders must stay on with one hand for the full count to score at all — touching the bull or themselves with the free hand means instant disqualification.

2. A chicken egg's incubation, laying to hatching 21 days

   Chicks start cheeping to their mother through the shell a day or two before hatching — and she clucks back to encourage them out.

3. Mike the Headless Chicken's life after losing his head 1.5 years

   The 1945 axe missed Mike's brain stem; fed by eyedropper, he toured sideshows and his Colorado hometown still throws him an annual festival.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. The time humans have lived in Australia 65K years

   Aboriginal Australians' roughly 65,000 years make theirs the oldest continuous culture on Earth — some oral histories describe coastlines drowned by rising seas 10,000 years ago.

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