Encyclopedia Of Life Overwhelmed

A new online encyclopedia proves so popular that it crashed on its first day.

The people behind the Encyclopedia of Life expected it to be popular. But even they were stunned by just how popular it proved. According to AP, it logged over 11 million hits in its first five-and-a-half hours on Tuesday – and for two of those hours the service was down. They even sought advice fromWikipedia on how to cope with the demand.   Although there are plans for the encyclopedia to eventually contain 1.8 million pages, it started out small,with pages devoted to just 30,000 species of animals or plants (remember, it’s the encyclopedia of life, after all).   Encyclopedia founding chairman Jesse Ausubel was a happy man, despitethe crash.   "We’ve been overwhelmed by traffic. We’re thrilled."