1940 census viewable online after crash

By RANDY HERSCHAFT, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The newly released 1940 U.S. census is such a hot item that it took a day for the website to get up to speed after tens of millions of hits almost paralyzed it.

The National Archives said Tuesday that census pages are again available for viewing. The website got 37 million hits hours after the information was first released to the public at 9 a.m. Monday.

The private company that's hosting the website says it had expected "a flood" of interest but instead got "a tsunami."

An archives spokeswoman says more servers are being added to help support the site.

The government released the records for the first time after 72 years of confidentiality expired. (Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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