"The Northeast Blackout of 2003 was a massive power outage that occurred throughout parts of the northeastern United States and eastern Canada on Thursday, August 14, 2003...It affected an estimated 10 million people in the Canadian province of Ontario (about one-third of the population of Canada), and 40 million people in eight U.S. states (about one-seventh of the population of the U.S.). Outage-related financial losses were estimated at $6 billion USD." (Wikipedia)