STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- On this hot summer Wednesday, United Airlines grounded flights across the nation because of "connectivity issues." And trading on the New York Stock Exchange came to a halt for most of the day because of an apparent technical glitch.

Thinking back over the years, one of the biggest, hottest tech glitches took place on Aug. 14, 2003, when a software problem caused a blackout that affected more than 55 million people in the Northeast, Midwest and even Canada.

That hot summer night, all of New York City was in darkness.

On Staten Island, average citizens took to busy intersections to help direct traffic. And residents gathered outside with neighbors and friends, talking about a world without lights.

Then Borough President James Molinaro referred to the blackout as "Staten Island's shining moment" at the time, thanking Staten Islanders for their exemplary behavior toward one another.

A software bug in the alarm system of FirstEnergy, a power company located in Ohio, was to blame for the blackout. Unpruned trees in Ohio affected the power lines and the distribution of electricity. This should have sounded an alarm at a control room operated by FirstEnergy, but a glitch in the software stopped that. Unaware of the serious problem, operators did not redistribute power.

The result? A loss of power that lasted for more than 12 hours in some areas, and at the time was the second largest blackout in history.

Staten Island was the first of the five boroughs to have power fully restored -- in the early morning hours of Aug. 15.