Highest Peaks based on total visitors per minute

The highest peaks since inception of the Net Usage Index for News (August 18, 2005), based on total visitors per minutes. The following data ranks the top peaks, and the corresponding events that were taking place in the world at the time.

	Rank		Date		Approximate Time (EST)		Peak Visitors per Minute		Compelling News Event*
	1		June 22,  2006		12:00 PM		7,283,584		U.S. eliminated by Ghana in  World Cup
	2		Mar. 20 ,2008		2:30 PM		7,008,325		Day One of U.S. College  Basketball  2008 Playoffs Coverage
	3		Mar. 16 ,2006		3:00 PM		5,489,918		Day One of U.S. College  Basketball  2006 Playoffs Coverage
	4		Mar. 15, 2007		2:30 PM		5,100,367		Day One of U.S. College Basketball  2007 Playoffs Coverage
	5		Feb 8,  2007		4:30 PM		4,885,065		News breaks on the death  of Anna Nicole Smith
	6		Sep.-  Nov.  Sundays,  2006		4:00 PM		4,778,916 (ave. peak)		U.S. National Football League  (NFL) Coverage
	7		June 12,  2006		2:00 PM		4,733,201		U.S. plays Czech Republic  in 1st Round of World Cup
	8		Oct. 11,  2006		2:45 PM		4,598,917		Cory Lidle's light plane crashes into  New York apartment building
	9		Mar. 17,  2006		2:30 PM		4,594,098		Day Two of U.S. College Basketball  2006 Playoffs Coverage
	10		Oct. 5,  2006		4:30 PM		4,567,571		Yankees lose in American League  Division Series game to Tigers
	11		Mar. 16,  2007		2:30 PM		4,369,741		Day Two of U.S. College Basketball  2007 Playoffs Coverage
	12		Apr. 16,  2007		3:30 PM		4,154,200		Deadly shootings at Virginia Tech
	13		Nov. 8,  2006		2:00 PM		4,053,610		Post Election Day 2006 coverage;  Rumsfeld resigns
	14		Oct. 19,  2006		3:30 PM		3,940,053		Escalating violence in Iraq
	15		Oct. 20,  2006		11:00 AM		3,932,119		Shiite militia seizes So. Iraqi city

* The Net Usage Index for News does not claim that a single news event accounts for all Web news traffic at any given time, but the Index can be used to correlate worldwide interest in specific news events with relative audience size.