One day to build a 380-mile-long road and 8 years to get it registered with the government

OK. Maybe a new favored author known as Christina H. From The 8 Most Incredible Things Slapped Together in a Day
By Christina H. Number 3 - Iowans Build a 380-Mile Road on Their Lunch Break.

Around the beginning of the 20th century, Americans discovered cars, and then shortly afterward discovered that driving cars over grass and mud really sucked, especially in the cars they made back then.

Iowa decided to get down to business and build a real road across the entire state, and to do it, for some reason, in one day. Presumably, the state of Iowa's schedule was booked solid for the remainder of the week.

Iowans along the route spent months stocking up on supplies, and one Saturday in the summer of 1910, everyone went to the road at 9 a.m. sharp and started paving. One hour later, the road was done, and by evening, all the road signs were up.

The fact that they'd built a 380-mile-long road in one hour was pretty amazing, but the funniest part is what happened next, in the convoluted journey the road took from physically existing to officially existing as a state highway.

First, they had to wait three years for the Iowa State Highway Commission to come into existence in 1913 as an independent state organization. Three years after that, one of the road's sponsors finally sent a letter asking to register it with the state. Letters then went back and forth with lags of up to eight months in between, and together with that and an almost farcical amount of incomplete paperwork and bureaucratic mix-ups, it was 1918 before the road was formally registered with the state.

It had taken one day to physically build the road and eight years to get it registered with the government, which, depending on your perspective, is either a cute funny story about the stupidity of bureaucrats or something to rile up the crowd at your next Tea Party rally.