This is just a bit of curious fun. I can think of a few stories I heard first on Twitter. They are:

• The assassination of Benazir Bhutto (via @martinstabe)
• The Chinese earthquake (via @scobleizer)
• The deaths of Bo Diddley and Ted Rogers
• The resignation of Roy Keane as manager of Sunderland
• Bank of England lowering interest rate to 2%
• Russian tanks moving into South Ossetia
• And, er, the Strictly Come Dancing voting scandal-that-then-became-a-fiasco (via @aarons)

It’s a curious mix of the general and the very specific. And I’m sure there are others I’ve since forgotten.

I asked the Twittersphere what events they first heard there, and the recent events in Mumbai featured highly, along with some of the above. Others included Michael Grimes hearing about the arrest of MP Damian Green via Twittering Labour MP @Tom_Watson before it hit the BBC, Dilyan Damyanov hearing about the death of Michael Crichton, and medeamaterial hearing about Ingrid Betancourt’s liberation from the FARC: “full five minutes after reading it tweeted by several people it was on TV”.

Conrad Quilty-Harper mentioned the OJ Simpson guilty verdict “and countless others first via @BreakingNewsOn“. Dana_Willhoit said “It’s amazing. I was a newspaper reporter – now I turn to Twitter for my news.”

What news stories can you remember hearing first on Twitter? Are there certain types that seem to spread better than others?