The science of sedimentology was revolutionized in 1948, when the concept of turbidity-current transport and deposition was introduced by Kuenen and Migliorini(1950). Turbidity currents, which are not observable in nature, are supposedly generated by submarine slides of catastrophic proportion. Such a postulate was a radical departure from the uniformitarianism of geology preached by Charles Lyell, who stated that processes operating in the past are those observable in the present, with the same energy or intensity. Therefore, the new concept was controversial in the 1950s, when I was a young sedimentologist working for the oil industry. The controversy was not only aired at professional meetings, but also during coffee breaks and cocktail hours.