SAN FRANCISCO (BNO NEWS) — As word of Michael Jackson’s death spread across the world, AT&T recorded an enormous spike in text messages, at one point reaching almost 4 million text messages per minute, more than 60 percent above normal volumes, a spokeswoman told BNO News on Friday.

“News of Michael Jackson’s death yesterday caused the largest spike in SMS traffic in our network history,” said Katherine Eller, a spokeswoman for AT&T. “Nearly 65,000 texts per second were sent as fans reached out to each other to share the sad news,” she added. The voice call attempt rate was about 10 percent above normal but Eller was not immediately able to provide specific numbers.

The death of music legend Michael Jackson caused, at least for AT&T, the largest ever spike in SMS traffic. The spike was even larger than the sudden “tidal wave” of traffic on September 11, 2001 when two hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. Two other hijacked passenger planes crashed into the Pentagon and the second in Pennsylvania.

The news of Michael Jackson’s death also brought down popular websites such as Google News. On September 11, 2001, as the news of the terrorist attacks sent a shockwave around the world, many news websites went down for hours due to the overwhelming traffic.

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