A 10-km-wide asteroid 65 million years ago created the 300-kilometer-wide Chicxulub crater on the Yucatán Peninsula, sealing the doom of about 75% of marine and land animals on Earth at the time, including the dinosaurs. The discovery of this mass extinction event is one of the great scientific stories of the last century, and it led to a renewed openness toward catastrophic events in Earth's history. After reviewing this story, we will branch out to look at a few of the 175 other confirmed impact craters on Earth and their relation to other extinction events, then look back to the formation of the Earth and the Late Heavy Bombardment, which may have been caused by the outward migration of Jupiter and Saturn. Finally, I will connect bombardments to the way life evolved on Earth, and in particular how early life may have managed to survive in the face such bombardments.