Europeana launches and crashes into the iceberg of user demand

Europeana, the European online library, launched today and crashed into the iceberg of user demand. What is it with new sites and the inability of their builders to anticipate server overload and compensate for it?

Update for 02008 11 21:

At least they managed to get an error page up:

The Europeana site is temporarily not accessible due to overwhelming interest after its launch (10 million hits per hour).

We are doing our utmost to reopen Europeana in a more robust version as soon as possible.

We will be back by mid-December.

For a preview on Europeana and further information.