ASP.Net Web Requests
Not a new article, but good reading. All you need to know about HTTP requests, including page life cycle.
Introduction
The purpose of this document is to provide a very thorough explanation of what happens during an HTTP request to an ASP.NET page being served up through IIS. It starts out with the basics but then dives in to the gory details, more detail than is probably needed for basic web page development. However a thorough knowledge of this process is invaluable when debugging strange problems, developing ASP.NET custom web controls or developing any sort of web framework.