Michael Jackson’s death is still pretty fresh in the American public’s memory. On the day he died three years ago, there were at first numerous news reports saying different things. One said Michael had a heart attack in his hotel, while another said he was in a coma.
The first reports that he died came from TMZ.com. Doctors at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center pronounced Jackson dead at 2:26 pm, and the story went up on TMZ 18 minutes later. The LA Times confirmed it at 2:51. The news spread very quickly, resulting in both TMZ and the website for The LA Times crashing. So many people were Googling Jackson’s name that Google first thought the search engine was under attack.
Twitter and Wikipedia both crashed at 3:15 pm, while AOL went down not long after for 40 minutes. It goes to show you just how feverishly people can react when a beloved pop idol passes away.