] Michelangelo was the first virus to draw serious media
] attention, in March 1992. One reason for this was its
] destructive payload [on 6 March, the anniversary of
] Michelangelo's birth, it destroyed data on the victim's
] hard disk]. Another was the 'doom and gloom' predictions
] circulating at the time about the virus. One US
] anti-virus company went so far as to predict that data on
] five million PCs would be destroyed. As it turned out,
] less than 10,000 PCs lost data as a result of
] Michelangelo.

Viruslist.com - Analyst's Diary