Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

Beyonce's baby news, shared at the MTV Video Music Awards, not only eclipsed the evening's other winners, it also broke a record on Twitter: 8,868 tweets per second.

It's not surprising, perhaps; many fans of Beyonce and husband Jay-Z have been waiting for such an announcement since the couple wed three years ago.

Until now, the record-holding event for tweets per second was set at 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year's Day, with 6,939 tweets per second. Twitter explained on its blog why that was:

Japan virtually shuts down as people spend the day with family and the people with whom they are closest. People make it a point to call their friends and connect with everyone they know to celebrate. With a population of over 127 million, Japanese mobile networks have been known to crash under the strain of this collective cheer. This year, on New Year’s Eve, many people turned to Twitter to celebrate.

Here are some other top tweets-per-second events:

• 5,500: East Coast earthquake last Tuesday
• 5,530: TPS peak rate during the Japanese earthquake and tsunami
• 5,008: The death of Osama bin Laden
• 4,064: Current TPS record for any sporting event, set during the 2011 Super Bowl
• 3,966: TPS peak rate during the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

We all know bad news travels fast on Twitter. But it reassures our faith in humanity to see that often, good news does, too.

Related stories:

• East Coast earthquake beat bin Laden (in tweets per second)
• Videos: Japan tweets spread post-Earthquake
• The Osama bin Laden Twitter explosion — illustrated
• Twitter on Osama: 'Highest sustained rates of Tweets ever'

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.