The rush to view purported pictures of Bigfoot on Thursday was so intense that the Web site maintained by a group claiming to have bagged the legendary biped went offline. Queries to SearchingForBigfoot.com were returned with an error message that said "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded."

Internet records show that the site is registered to a California-based company called The Bigfoot Hunters, which bills itself as the world's only "Bigfoot trackers." Company members this week claimed to have found a Bigfoot carcass in a heavily wooded area in northern Georgia and said they plan to unveil the evidence at a press conference Thursday.

They claim the body is 7 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs more than 500 pounds -- meaning, for context, that it's just an inch taller, but considerably stockier, than basketball superstar Yao Ming.

In failing to anticipate the publicity spike's impact on their Web operations, The Bigfoot Hunters are not alone.

The New York Jets' online store was offline for parts of last week as fans rushed to be among the first to purchase a jersey bearing quarterback Brett Favre's famously difficulty-to-pronounce last name and No. 4 player number.

Demand for the jerseys was such that JetShop.com was either offline completely, or had slowed to a crawl, for much of last Thursday.

New York Magazine's Web site earlier this year went dark for a time after thousands of people attempted to view the publication's nude Lindsay Lohan photos online.

Also this year, Oprah Winfrey was forced to apologize to the millions of fans whose efforts to log into the self-empowerment guru's widely-hyped Webcast were thwarted by overwhelmed Internet servers. The Webcast featured Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle, whose new age bestseller "A New Earth" was an Oprah Book Club selection.

In 1999, a Webcast of the Victoria's Secret fashion show in New York City famously crashed, leaving millions of viewers frustrated.