Bill Bryson - A short history of nearly everything

“only shake my head in wonder . . .” Williams and Montaigne, p. 151.

“An airliner . . . reported being pelted with rocks.” Thompson, p. 123.

“Yet Yakima had no volcano emergency procedures.” Fisher et al., p. 16.

“In 1943, at Parícutin in Mexico . . .” Smith, The Weather , p. 112.

“you wouldn’t be able to get within a thousand kilometers . . .” BBC Horizon documentary “Crater of Death,” first broadcast May 6, 2001.

“a bang that reverberated around the world . . .” Lewis, Rain of Iron and Ice , p. 152.

“The last supervolcano eruption on Earth . . .” McGuire, p. 104.

“for the next twenty thousand years . . .” McGuire, p. 107.

“you’re standing on the largest active volcano in the world . . .” Paul Doss, interview with author, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, June 16, 2001.

“devastatingly evident on the night of August 17, 1959 . . .” Smith and Siegel, pp. 5-6.

“as little as a single molecule . . .” Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve , p. 12.

“scientists were finding even hardier microbes . . .” Ashcroft, Life at the Extremes , p. 275.

“As NASA scientist Jay Bergstralh has put it . . .” PBS NewsHour transcript, August 20, 2002.

“99.5 percent of the world’s habitable space . . .” New York Times Book Review , “Where Leviathan Lives,” April 20, 1997, p. 9.

“water is about 1,300 times heavier than air . . .” Ashcroft, p. 51.

“your veins would collapse . . .” New Scientist , “Into the Abyss,” March 31, 2001.

“the pressure is equivalent to being squashed . . .” New Yorker , “The Pictures,” February 15, 2000, p. 47.

“Because we are made largely of water ourselves . . .” Ashcroft, p. 68.

“humans may be more like whales . . .” Ashcroft, p. 69.

“all that is left in the suit . . .” Haldane, What is Life? p. 188.

“the directors of a new tunnel under the Thames . . .” Ashcroft, p. 59.

“he had discovered himself disrobing . . .” Norton, Stars Beneath the Sea , p. 111.

“Haldane’s gift to diving . . .” Haldane, What Is Life? p. 202.

“his blood saturation level had reached 56 percent . . .” Norton, p. 105.

“But is it oxyhaemoglobin . . .” Quoted in Norton, p. 121.

“the cleverest man I ever knew.” Gould, The Lying Stones of Marrakech , p. 305.

“a very enjoyable experience . . .” Norton, p. 124.

“seizure, bleeding or vomiting.” Norton, p. 133.

“Perforated eardrums were quite common . . .” Haldane, What is Life? p. 192.

“left Haldane without feeling . . .” Haldane, What Is Life ? p. 202.

“It also produced wild mood swings.” Ashcroft, p. 78.

“the tester was usually as intoxicated . . .” Haldane, What Is Life ? p. 197.

“The cause of the inebriation . . .” Ashcroft, p. 79.

“half the calories you burn . . .” Attenborough, The Living Planet , p. 39.

“the portions of Earth . . .” Smith, p. 40.

“Had our sun been ten times as massive . . .” Ferris, The Whole Shebang , p. 81.

“The Sun’s warmth reaches it . . .” Grinspoon, p. 9.

“Venus was only slightly warmer than Earth . . .” National Geographic , “The Planets,” January 1985, p. 40.

“the atmospheric pressure at the surface . . .” McSween, Stardust to Planets , p. 200.

“The Moon is slipping from our grasp . . .” Ward and Browniee, Rare Earth , p. 33.

“The most elusive element of all . . .” Atkins, The Periodic Kingdom , p. 28.

“discarded the state silver dinner service . . .” Bodanis, The Secret House , p. 13.

“a very modest 0.048 percent . . .” Krebs, p. 148.

“If it wasn’t for carbon . . .” Davies, p. 126.

“Of every 200 atoms in your body . . .” Snyder, The Extraordinary Chemistry of Ordinary Things , p. 24.

“The degree to which organisms require . . .” Parker, Inscrutable Earth , p. 100.

“Drop a small lump of pure sodium . . .” Snyder, p. 42.

“The Romans also flavored their wine with lead . . .” Parker, p. 103.

“The physicist Richard Feynman . . .” Feynman, p. xix.

“Earth would be a lifeless ball of ice.” Stevens, p. 7.

“and was discovered in 1902 by a Frenchman in a balloon . . .” Stevens, p. 56; and Nature , “1902 and All That,” January 3, 2002, p. 15.

“from the same Greek root as menopause .” Smith, p. 52.

“severe cerebral and pulmonary edemas . . .” Ashcroft, p. 7.

“The temperature six miles up . . .” Smith, p. 25.

“about three-millionths of an inch . . .” Allen, Atmosphere , p. 58.

“it could well bounce back into space . . .” Allen, p. 57.

“Howard Somervell ‘found himself choking to death’ . . .” Dickinson, The Other Side of Everest , p. 86.

“The absolute limit of human tolerance . . .” Ashcroft, p. 8.

“even the most well-adapted women . . .” Attenborough, The Living Planet , p. 18.

“nearly half a ton has been quietly piled upon us . . .” Quoted by Hamilton-Paterson, p. 177.

“a typical weather front . . .” Smith, p. 50.

“equivalent to four days’ use of electricity . . .” Junger, The Perfect Storm , p. 128.

“At any one moment 1,800 thunderstorms . . .” Stevens, p. 55.

“Much of our knowledge . . .” Biddle, p. 161.

“a wind blowing at two hundred miles an hour . . .” Bodanis, E = mc 2 , p. 68.

“as much energy ‘as a medium-size nation.’ ” Ball, p. 51.

“The impulse of the atmosphere to seek equilibrium . . .” Science, “The Ascent of Atmospheric Sciences,” October 13, 2000, p. 300.

“Coriolis’s other distinction . . .” Trefil, The Unexpected Vista , p. 24.

“gives weather systems their curl . . .” Drury, p. 25.

“Celsius made boiling point zero . . .” Trefil, The Unexpected Vista , p. 107.

“Howard is chiefly remembered . . .” Dictionary of National Biography , vol. 10, pp. 51-52.

“Howard’s system has been much added to . . .” Trefil, Meditations at Sunset , p. 62.

“the source of the expression ‘to be on cloud nine.’ ” Hamblyn, p. 252.

“A fluffy summer cumulus . . .” Trefil, Meditations at Sunset , p. 66.

“Only about 0.035 percent of the Earth’s fresh water . . .” Ball, p. 57.

“the prognosis for a water molecule varies widely.” Dennis, p. 8.

“Even something as large as the Mediterranean . . .” Gribbin and Gribbin, Being Human , p. 123.

“Such an event occurred . . .” New Scientist , “Vanished,” August 7, 1999.