This is quite some exaggeration. then all eukaryotes—every flower and fungus, spider and sparrow, man and woman—descended from a sudden and breathtakingly impr

This is quite some exaggeration. then all eukaryotes—every flower and fungus, spider and sparrow, man and woman—descended from a sudden and breathtakingly improbable merger between two microbes. Except that it happened at least twice - besides the mitochondria (explained in the article), there's also the plastids that probably have the same origin (e.g. the Chloroplast - the photosynthesizing organelle in plant cells).