Born This Day: Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875 – March 19, 1950) was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.

Pellucidar is the hollow Earth milieu for a series of stories featuring David Innes and his inventor friend Abner Perry which they discover using an "iron mole" to burrow 500 miles into the Earth's crust where they find a prehistoric land. From Wikipedia

Went Extinct This Day (1914): The Passsenger Pigeon

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In 1914, the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) became extinct as the last surviving bird of the colorful native American species of dove died at the Cincinnati Zoo. The passenger pigeon was hunted to extinction; the fact that it traveled and nested in large flocks made it easy to slaughter.

From Today In Science History

Died This Day: Luis Alvarez

Alverez (June 13, 1911 - Sept. 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968 for work that included the discovery of many resonance particles --subatomic particles having extremely short lifetimes and occurring only in high-energy nuclear collisions.

In about 1980 Alvarez (left) helped his son, the geologist Walter Alvarez (right), publicize Walter's discovery of a worldwide layer of clay that has a high iridium content and which occupies rock strata at the geochronological boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras; i.e., about 66.4 million years ago.

They postulated that the iridium had been deposited following the impact on Earth of an asteroid or comet and that the catastrophic climatic effects of this massive impact caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Though initially controversial, this widely publicized theory gradually gained support as the most plausible explanation of the abrupt demise of the dinosaurs.

Read more HERE. Image from HERE.