[PigsnieLite]

COOL! Read this! From the Washington Posty!

The death of Pope John Paul II has unleashed an unprecedented global media outpouring. Preliminary numbers from the Global Language Monitor's daily Internet and media analysis suggest that in the 24 hours since the pontiff's death, there have been some 45,000 major news stories, and more than 4.4 million Internet citations. In comparison, for the entire preceding year there were only 28,000 major news stories and 1.5 million Internet citations about John Paul II.

"According to Paul J.J. Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor, 'The word historic is associated with the pontiff over 2,000,000 times, while conservative is associated some 500,000 times, and loved or beloved about 450,000 times in the first 48 hours since John Paul's passing.'" (And here we all thought we were being original!)

"By way of comparison, within the first 48 hours of the Pontiff's passing, there were:

"--More than two-and-a-half times as many global Web citations for John Paul than there were for Ronald Reagan, when he died in June of 2004;

"--Almost 3 times as many news stories for John Paul as there were for the 9/11 attacks in 2001;

"--Some ten times as many news stories as there were for the re-election of President Bush."