[cycomanic]

Similar thing happened at uni when I was doing a PhD.

The graduate office had some sort of mailing list which included all PhD students (or maybe even graduate students). There was maybe one mail a year to this list.

At some point someone replied to the list (don't ask why the allowed everyone to post), they want to be unsubscribe, trigger a torrent of emails of people wanting to unsubscribe, people telling people to use the link on the email, people asking why they get this email, others telling everyone to stop replying (the irony). It was a study of human psychology.

The whole thing lasted a week, I think in the end somebody was competent enough to restrict who could write to the list or maybe they just nuked the list.