Some light Sunday reading about the rise and fall of the .ly domain, at Priceonomics:

In April 2004, some 12,400 domains ending in .ly disappeared. The British company managing it had disappeared, too, and for a time nobody knew what to do. According to Bridle, “some but not all” of the domains came back online within a few days, and one “Dr. Hosni Tayeb” sent a cryptic email to all domain holders communicating, in broken English, that everything was fine: “Thank you very much for your concern about .ly cc TLD. People do care around!”