SortStack #3252 — 2035-05-05
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- The Epsom Derby, Britain's most famous horse race 2.5 min
Workforce's 2010 record run covered the mile and a half at over 56 km/h — and the race has been run every year since 1780, even through both World Wars.
- 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.
- The Siege of Leningrad in World War II 2.4 years
Through the blockade, scientists at the city's seed bank starved to death rather than eat their collection of edible seeds and potatoes.
- A frilled shark's pregnancy 3.5 years
At an estimated three and a half years, it's the longest known gestation of any vertebrate — embryos grow just over a centimetre a month.
- 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.
- How long the Parthenon has been standing 2.5K years
It survived largely intact for over 2,000 years — until 1687, when a Venetian shell hit the gunpowder the Ottomans had stored inside.