Apache vs. Yaws
I could observe a similar effect with the Python Desktop Server as well: the Medusa web server, written entirely in Python, is easily capable of keeping up with Apache in terms of performance, and even in the main domain of a web server when serving static content! And Medusa doesn't even need threads for this; instead it works with multiplexing via the select() call. Quite impressive...
I found the original article at Lambda the Ultimate.