Royal Baby Fails to Beat Pope, Obama on Twitter

You could be forgiven for thinking your Twitter feed was nothing but Royal baby news earlier Monday. Not only was the birth of Prince William and Kate Middleton's son , it also gave rise to a good half-dozen worldwide trending hashtags

Now, the vital statistics are in from Twitter: Royal baby mentions reached a frenzied peak of 25,300 tweets per minute, right when the Prince of Cambridge's birth was announced. The #royalbaby hashtag has been used 900,000 times and counting.

That may sound like a lot, but it's small potatoes next to two other major international-news events from the past 12 months. The election of Pope Francis I led to 132,000 tweets per minute back in March. U.S. President Barack Obama's re-election, meanwhile, set an all-time record of 237,000 tweets per minute in November.