Chengdu China Earthquake
An earthquake measuring 7.8 has hit south-west China, according to the US Geological Survey. Reports said tremors could be felt as far afield as the Thai capital, Bangkok, and Hanoi in Vietnam. The quake struck 57 miles (92km) north-west of Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu, at 1428 (0628 GMT), the survey said on its website. Via: BBC
As in previous cases news broke very quickly on Twitter, Scoble even become some type of hub of information from the scene (Twitters local to the quake).
Check out Summerize’s search for earthquake right now.
I see Twitter having its own natural disaster and crashing any moment now. Sunday nights are notoriously bad for any server/data center.
Official details via the USGS
Update: The following day seems there is lots of talk about Twitter and the Earthquake, see Danny and the BBC again.
On FriendFeed, this post was liked by 0 people and commented on 0 times 
May 12th, 2008 at 7:38 am
why would twitter crash any moment now?
May 12th, 2008 at 7:42 am
For one the huge load thats going to be put on the server over the next few hours. Soon east coasters will start to login and overload the system.
Second, servers are soooo notorious for failing on a sunday night. anyone who has worked as a network admin will probably tell you the same. For some reason issues build up over the weekend and the machines\infrastruture are less maintained. Monday mornings are never fun when dealing with servers.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:46 am
ok, hope you’re not right, but see your point;)
November 6th, 2008 at 2:42 am
Thanks for the info!