I haven't read every single post on this thread, but I can assure you that "every single picture" did not disappear from the web at the same time. That is simply impossible.
A lot of advertizing images are hosted by a few servers. If these failed, a lot of sites would appear not to have images. The same might be true of some countries or some news services.
Well in my case.. Fotki was down.. Pbase was down... Drudge was down.. and there were no pics on MSN on news or FR or anything I linked to..
Nada..