But was there any such attack on Bitcoin around that time?
As far as we know, no.
Plus if there was, let's get the facts clear. There's a misstatement that's commonly accepted that if an entity "controls 51% or more of the total hashing power, that entity has total control over the Bitcoin network". That's actually wrong. An entity can have 100% of the total hashing power, but it still can't change the consensus rules and it still can't make invalid transactions into valid transactions. It can only censor transactions.