The car crash that ended Diana's life has been dubbed the defining story in the Net's progression from novelty to mainstream news medium. The tragedy broke all traffic records and is a powerful draw still. (Click on the headlines above for the original stories.)

There was only modest online interest on the day of Pathfinder's spectacular landing, July 4 -- barbecues, parades and a lot going on already in the midsummer night sky, no doubt. But quickly enough you converged on the site in droves for reports on t he Sojourner rover's progress and photos of the Martian surface. Of course, a lot of the people who hit our site got here thinking that Pathfinder.com was the official NASA site. Hate it when that happens.

The killing of the famous designer by a preppy-looking gay gigolo grabbed you by the lapels and held you for a week. But once Andrew Cunanan's corpse had been identified, interest in the pointless, lurid tale faded as quickly as the life of its hollow antagonist.

Attention was sporadic during the trial itself, maybe because you'd already heard enough. But you poured in to read about the verdict.

When it became known that the suicidal cult had a web site -- which we mirrored -- flocks of curious clickers came to Pathfinder.com to view excerpts.

The high number of hits here is partly due to the extra links -- instant reports, photo essays, etc. -- we gave you to click on. But click you did, perhaps in reluctant anticipation of violence. The traffic startled us, given Americans' supposed lack of interest in international news -- but perhaps you weren't Americans at all.

Daily civil court proceedings failed to ignite great interest, but the verdict itself brought a swarm of clickers. In any case, traffic was negligible compared to the criminal trial.

Being the leader of a billion-odd Chinese should make one newsworthy, but the long-awaited passing of an enfeebled octogenarian isn't what you'd call sexy news. So we're both gratified and surprised that the death of the architect of post-Mao China would make its way into this pantheon of scandals, murders and conspiracies.

Judge Hiller Zobel's decision to free young Louise Woodward brought clicks on the day of the verdict, but there wasn't much interest after that -- probably because very little happened. Zobel's historic plan to release his decision on the Web fizzled when construction workers accidentally snipped a power cable.

Ironically, Microsoft's antitrust battles with the Justice Department over its Internet Explorer Browser caused traffic from our readers using the IE4 browser to skyrocket, particularly in mid-December when a judge issued a critical ruling in the case. Judging by their clicks, Netscape surfers seemed less interested.