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

MICROBES

In fact, there is no point in trying to hide from your bacteria, for they are on and around you always, in numbers you can't conceive. If you are in good health and averagely diligent about hygiene, you will have a herd of about one trillion bacteria grazing on your fleshy plains- about a hundred thousand of them on every square centimeter of skin. They are there to dine off the ten billion or so flakes of skin you shed every day, plus all the tasty oils and fortifying minerals that seep out from every pore and fissure. You are for them the ultimate food court, with the convenience of warmth and constant mobility thrown in. By way of thanks, they give you B.O.

- from "Small World", A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson