He might have had keep-alives enabled. Apache + keep-alives + slow clients is a recipe for disaster. Seems everyone learns this the hard way. I learned it the hard way in 1998 when the Starr Report was released and my web farm was running Apache on Ultra 2's.
Amusingly, patio11's "Memory-Constrained VPS" have the same amount of memory (512 MBs) as those Ultra 2's I mentioned (I think, they may have actually only has 256 MB at the time).
patio11 learned it the hard way recently too http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/19/running-apache-on-a-memo...
Amusingly, patio11's "Memory-Constrained VPS" have the same amount of memory (512 MBs) as those Ultra 2's I mentioned (I think, they may have actually only has 256 MB at the time).