The Great Chicago Fire started at about 9am and burned for 50 hours between October 8th and October 10th, 1871. Chicago had experienced twenty smaller fires in the 300 hours leading up to the blaze, due to drought conditions, strong winds, and the abundance of wooden buildings at the time.

The first battle of the American Civil War, the Battle of Fort Sumter began with the shelling of the Fort at 4:30 am on April 12th, 1861 and concluded with the surrender of the Fort by its Commander Robert Anderson at about 1:30pm on April 13th, 33 hours later. The Battle's only casualties were the accidental shootings of two Union soldiers during the surrender ceremony.

110.30 hours into its maiden voyage, the RMS Titanic had completely sunk after colliding with an iceberg. The sinking was one of the deadliest maritime disasters in peacetime history, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 passengers and crew.

In an effort to win a £10,000 prize from London's The Daily Mail, John Alcock and Arthur Brown completed a flight from St. John's, Newfoundland to Connemara, Ireland in 16.20 hours in June, 1919. In spite of their fame as aviators, Brown would never fly again after this trip and Alcock would lose his life during a flight to France less than 4,380 hours later.

Lit at 1:30am on October 22nd, 1879, the first Edison completed his first majorly successful test of his light bulb, which continued to burn for 14.5 hours until the bulb glass succumbed to the heat and cracked, extinguishing the filament. Within 26,300 hours of his success, Edison was selling 45,000 light bulbs per day to large companies across the country.

The first trip by humans to the surface of the Moon, the Apollo 11 Mission began with the launch of the spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 16th, 1969 and concluded with the return of the command module on July 24th, 1969 — a total mission time of 195.310 hours. The total time spent by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin on the Moon's surface was 2.611110 hours.

The longest professional baseball game in history — a triple-A game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings — took place between April 18th and 19th, 1981 lasting a total of 8.40 hours (and 33 innings). The Red Sox ultimately won the game 3-2, but not before the game set twelve records, including the most plate appearances by a single player - a three-way tie between Tom Eaton, Dallas Williams, and future Hall-of-Famer Cal Ripken Jr., all of Rochester.

The first recorded automobile race of its distance, the inaugural Indianapolis 500 was won by Ray Harroun in 6.70220 hours. Haroun's average speed through the race was 120 kph (74.59 mph).

The Church's enigmatic, shortest-reigning Pope, Boniface VI was pontiff for a period of 360 hours in AD 896 before dying under somewhat mysterious circumstances. His election was subsequently pronounced null by Pope John IX because Boniface had been previously defrocked while serving as a Roman priest.

Gone with the Wind, the multiple Academy Award-winning film, had a running time of 3.770 hours for its 1939 copyright release. The scene depicting the burning of the Atlanta Depot cost $25,000 (unadjusted) and was filmed on a 0.16 sq. km (40-acre) set using all seven Technicolor cameras in existence at the time.

Having caught pneumonia and pleurisy early in his term as President of the United States, William Henry Harrison died after 756.50 hours minutes in office. Following his death, Congress approved a Presidential widow's pension for Harrison's wife, Anna Symmes, who received a year's worth of Harrison's presidential salary — $25,000 — and the right to free postage for the remainder of her life.

The First Continental Congress — which included such notable members as Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, John Jay and George Washington — met from September 5th to October 26th, 1774 — a total of 1,200 hours. Of the thirteen original American colonies in existence at the time, only the Province of Georgia sent no delegates to the Congress.

Per Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Laws of the Game, an association football game consists of two periods of 0.750 hours each, for a total of 1.50 hours of playing time (except in games played by women, or by players under 16 or over 35 years of age). The longest recorded amateur football game was a 2009 match in the Filipino town of Barotac Nuevo that lasted for 35 hours.

Attempting to find a western route to Asia, Christopher Columbus set sail on August 3rd, 1492 and landed in the Bahamas on October 12th — 2,000 hours later. After one of Columbus' ships, the Santa Maria ran aground in present-day Haiti, he ordered that the timber be used to used to build a fort and settlement called La Navidad; it remains missing to archaeologists to this day.

Having left Southampton, England on September 16th (new style), 1620, the Mayflower dropped anchor near Cape Cod, Massachusetts 1,600 hours later on November 21st (new style), 1620. The voyagers had planned to travel in a convoy of two ships, but the smaller Speedwell was found to be leaking (evidently as a result of sabotage) and all passengers had to be moved to the Mayflower instead.