Goddamn Jefferson upstaging Adams, completely ruining his last words.
4 June 1944 - For the first time since 1815, the US Navy captures an enemy warship on the high seas.
eta: Although this wouldn’t really be an “over-shadowing,” since the capture was slapped with a Top Secret label immediately.
This is the first I’ve seen of this thread.
Today I overheard some cow-orkers bemoaning Farrah’s getting upstaged by Jacko. My initial response was, “Well, he’s more relevant. Except for ‘I’m DYING!’ when did we last hear from Farrah?” Frankly I thought she was already dead.
Then this very subject occurred to me, to wit: Ma Theresa and Diana, which bothered me at the time. Until today I figured I was the only person alive who noted their near-simultaneous passing. And here is where things get weird:
I was laying all of this out to a buddy of mine just this morning, and I couldn’t help quoting Warren Zevon: “How the crowd gets fickle when your face is to the ground.” The man had a handle on bitter truth.
Well, there was the time when I finally lost my virginity.
I thought it was pretty damn big news. And a big surprise to pretty much everyone else. I could hardly wait to get the local paper the next day.
Open the paper and what do I see on the front page ? That damn glory hound Mrs Johnston had won “best tomato” at the county fair. My news story got bumped to a couple liner AFTER the classifieds because on it, just below a used car ad.
A bit of a reversal of this, but in the film The Devil’s Rejects, there’s a funny bit where a character is bitching about the fact that Groucho Marx’s passing on August 19, 1977 was completely overlooked because Elvis had died three days prior.
So here we have the passing of a legend being (according to the film) completely overlooked because the media was still going on about Elvis. I don’t recall, I was only 7 at the time.
The September 12, 2001 edition of The Onion had, as one of its little headline-blurbs on the side (the ones that don’t actually have a story with them) “Massive Attack on Pentagon Makes Page 12 News”.
My Grandmother was murdered, and nobody knew who did it; to try and get more information (witnesses and so on), my family pestered all the newspapers to write about her killing.
Unfortunately, they had enough death stories to fill their papers- she died on the same day as Elvis Presley. I wonder if her killers might have been found had it been a slow news week.
I recall that the results of a fairly well contested primary for the Massachusetts Ninth Congressional District, to replace the recently deceased Joe Moakley (and the Democratic primary was really the only race that mattered, this being Massachusetts and all) being pushed back to page 35 of the Boston Herald’s Septemeber 12th, 2001 edition.
My birth wasn’t covered much in the papers because of Mao Zedong’s death only six days earlier. 
I think the best example is the Peshtigo fire which killed between 1200 & 2400 people destroyed 12 towns and burned between 1.2 & 1.5 million acres on both sides of Green Bay. All this happened on the 8th of October 1871 the same day that a much less severe fire happened in Chicago. Everyone knows about the Chicago fire but the biggest fire in US history is largely unknown.
Mariah Carey’s Glitter was released on 9/11/2001.
Which, to be honest, was probably for the best.
Ed McMahon’s death was double-upstaged - first by Farrah and then by Wacko Jacko.
Not quite along the same lines, pro wrestler Mick Foley postponed his planned retirement due to a (real) neck injury which was expected to force “Stone Cold” Steve Austin to retire more or less immediately. As it happened, Austin didn’t retire, and Foley is still wrestling now - just shy of 10 years after he initially planned to retire.
Picking up on this one a bit – Gen. Mark Clark was an excellent general, with a large dose of strategic sense and an ego to match. He scheduled the entry into Rome as as much a P.R. event as a battle, knowing the press would be all over the freeing of the Eternal City.
Unfortunately, he didn’t consult with Ike’s plans. Oops!
Groucho Marx died two or three days after Elvis Presley. Probably the first time ever that his timing was less than impeccable.
April 21, 1912 – The opening of Fenway Park the previous day was pushed off the Boston front pages due to continuing coverage of the sinking of the Titanic.
June 4, 1932 – Despite Lou Gehrig hitting four home runs the previous day, the top sports story was the retirement of long-time New York Giants manager John McGraw.
I seem to remember learning of the death of Michael Landon and Lee Remick on the same day, but I see Remick’s death is listed one day later. Both were ill, neither death was a surprise, but Remick’s death received less coverage.
As my mum was dying in 2005, she still had her sense of humour and would joke about the death watch that the world was doing.
In her words “that poor girl (Terri Schiavo Died March 31), that stubborn old man (Pope John Paul II - Died Apr 2 about 5 hours before mum) and the prince (Prince Rainier of Monaco Died Apr 6th)”
The pope’s death moved Terri Schiavo from the front page and I had to look it up later that month to see if the Prince had even died. Of course, I was kinda pre-occupied at the time with mum’s passing. But certainly the passing of the prince got much less coverage than his wife did (Grace Kelly).
If it wasn’t for the Internet, I might not have known about John Ritter’s death at all. I’m pretty sure 8 Simple Rules was in reruns on some Scandinavian cable/satellite channel or another at the time, but his death got buried in the news by the murder of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh the same day. Then the next day, when it might have turned up in the culture and entertainment sections of the papers, Johnny Cash passed away, and…
For that matter, the start of the Gulf War (the 1991 one) was the second biggest story here in Norway that day, behind the death of King Olav. That was not exactly the best news morning to wake up to.
On January 13, 1982, around 4:30 p.m., a Metrorail subway car derailed in Washington DC, killing three people. It was the first fatal derailment in Metro history.
About a half-hour earlier, Air Florida Flight 90 had crashed into a bridge over the Potomac river between Washington and Virginia, killing 78 people.