Bacteria

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was a 17th-century Dutch draper who had a keen interest in lenses, which he needed to examine the quality of threads. He developed an early microscope, which he used in 1670 to become the first ever person to see bacteria. Van Leeuwenhoek called these previously invisible living things "animalcules."

Van Leeuwenhoek's "animalcules" were just at the limit of what his simple lenses could make out and, in one of the most striking hiatuses in the history of science, no one else would see them again for over a century.

A cluster of Escherichia coli bacteria magnified 10,000 times. 

Bacteria can live for centuries, as evidenced by the discovery of bacteria from the ancient Egyptian tombs.

Scientists have revived bacteria that were 250 million years old.

The first film to be censored in the United Kingdom was Charles Urban's ninety second movie of a piece of Stilton cheese viewed from a microscope. Released in 1898 the image of active bacteria on a cheese created a storm of protest from British cheesemakers so it was quietly withdrawn from exhibition.

Close to fifty percent of the bacteria in the mouth lives on the surface of our tongue.

Mustaches are hotbeds for bacteria because of the moist air leaving the body through the nose and mouth.

There is a bacterium that does photosynthesis without sunlight. According to a 2005 study in PNAS, which the researchers name GSB1, uses instead it uses thermal "black-body" radiation. It was discovered in 2005 on a deep-sea hydrothermal vent, at a depth of 2400 m, in complete darkness.

There are microscopic living things in solid rock up to 7 km deep, called Endoliths. So little energy is available they undergo cell division once every 100 years, and some may only divide once every 10,000 years.

In 2008 scientists discovered a new species of bacteria that lives in hairspray.

There are around 10,000,000,000 bacteria in a gram of soil.

There is more bacteria in your mouth then there are people in the world.

Bacteria is the tiniest free-living cells. They are so small that a single drop of liquid contains as many as 50 million of them.

Pound for pound, the strongest organisms on Earth are gonorrhea bacteria—they can pull 100,000 times their body weight.

In the United States bacteria in foods cause 6.5 million to 33 million cases of human illness and 9000 deaths annually.

Every square inch of the human body has an average of 32 million bacteria on it.

Scientists have estimated that about 95% of all the cells in the body are bacteria. The vast majority of these microbes can be found within the digestive tract.

The adult human has two to nine pounds of bacteria in his or her body.

There is ten times more bacteria in your body than actual body cells.

The average office desk has 400 times more bacteria than a toilet.

The act of blowing out candles on birthday cakes increases bacteria by more than 1,400%. 

Bacteria can reproduce sexually.

Bacteria reproduce by binary fission, meaning one cell divides into two.

Belly buttons contain an average 1400 types of bacteria.

Source Greatfacts.com