I would guess not too many people in North America noticed (presumably being asleep), but late last night two separate Tier 1 (or "backbone") ISPs had major connectivity problems. Level 3 and Verio are both Tier 1 ISPs, which means they are two of the relatively few companies that provide portions of the "core" of the Internet. The Internet is designed in such a way as to be able to route around outages such as what happened last night, but any time a Tier 1 ISP has connectivity problems is a problem for everyone. Plus, anyone who's Tier 2 ISP buys transit from that particular Tier 1 ISP will find the Internet much smaller than usual.
The two providers were only down for about an hour, but the fallout of such a significant event is probably still happening. The system will recover from the event though, so that's not the real problem. The real problem is that Level 3 is having serious problems. Just a few weeks ago Level 3 turned off their peering point with Cogent Communications, another Tier 1 ISP, because of some undisclosed contract dispute, effectively disconnecting their customers from anything on Cogent's network. It has since been turned back on, but the incident put focus on a good question: What happens when the Internet, widely regarded as the world's future communication tool and essential to business, disintegrates because of a dispute or problem between two core companies?
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