[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

S-L put on quite a show, and was IMHO the igniter of concerns about comet/meteor catastrophes. Combined with the Alvarez's theory about the K/T extinction it created concern in the general public previously limited to readers of science fiction.

[SunkenCiv]

Over the long weekend I wound up with History Channel’s “Prehistoric Megastorms” or something like that, has seven or eight episodes, each one about different disasters, including the K-T extinction, the Clovis Comet, Toba (heh heh), etc. Most of them were about impacts from space, which (until 1994) were mostly pooh-poohed even by astronomers, geologists, etc. It took Apollo 17 to nail the coffin shut on the supposedly dominant role of volcanism on the lunar surface, but until 1994, Shoemaker’s impact models for Berringer Crater and the Ries Basin remained underdiscussed curiousities.