SortStack #3224 — 2035-04-07

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A camera speedlight flash firing at full power 1 ms

   At low power settings, flash bursts get even shorter — down to around 1/30,000 of a second, fast enough to freeze a bursting balloon mid-pop.

2. Sunlight travelling from the Sun's surface to Earth 8.3 min

   If the Sun vanished right now, we'd keep seeing it — and orbiting it — for another 8 minutes and 20 seconds before noticing anything.

3. Alcock and Brown's first nonstop transatlantic flight 16 h

   The 1919 crossing ended nose-first in an Irish bog they mistook for a meadow. Brown had climbed onto the wings mid-flight to chip off ice.

4. 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.

5. New Horizons' journey from Earth to Pluto 9.5 years

   It left Earth as the fastest spacecraft ever launched — and Pluto was demoted from planet status just seven months into the trip.

6. 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.

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