THE SQUEEZE

Plenty else can go wrong, however. In the days of diving suits— the sort that were connected to the surface by long hoses— divers sometimes experienced a dreaded phenomenon known as "the squeeze." This occurred when the surface pumps failed, leading to a catastrophic loss of pressure in the suit. The air would leave the suit with such violence that the hapless diver would be, all too literally, sucked up into the helmet and hosepipe. When hauled to the surface, "All that is left in the suit are his bones and some rags of flesh," the biologist J.B.S. Haldane wrote in 1947, adding for the benefit of doubters, "This has happened."

—A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson