50 Fun Facts About Osama Bin Laden

Which viral YouTube clip was found among the files on Osama bin Laden's computer?

Charlie Bit My Finger, a clip of two English brothers, sat on the seized hard drive alongside Tom and Jerry cartoons, the animated film Antz and several video games.

Which kind of rogue animal, blamed for at least 27 deaths in Assam, India, was nicknamed Osama bin Laden?

An elephant, a bull that raided villages near Tezpur between 2004 and 2006, was given the militant's name. It was eventually shot, though some doubted the right animal had been killed.

Osama bin Laden's father Muhammad and eldest half-brother Salem both died in which kind of accident, decades apart?

A plane crash killed Muhammad bin Ladin in Saudi Arabia in 1967, and Salem died in 1988 when the ultralight he was flying hit power lines in Texas.

A letter by Osama bin Laden, released after his death, urged Americans to help prevent which global problem?

Climate change worried bin Laden enough that he drafted a letter asking Americans to save humanity from greenhouse gas emissions. His 2002 letter had already faulted the US for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.

Which Kathryn Bigelow film, a Best Picture Oscar nominee, dramatises the CIA's long hunt for Osama bin Laden?

Zero Dark Thirty shared the Oscar for sound editing in a rare tie with Skyfall. Its working title, For God and Country, echoed words radioed from the compound during the raid.

Lacking a tape measure, how did US commandos estimate the height of Osama bin Laden's body?

One lay down beside it: a raider of known height stretched out next to the body, which matched bin Laden's 6 ft 4 in. The president joked that a unit with a $65 million helicopter could afford a tape measure.

Which breed was Cairo, the military working dog that joined the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden's compound?

Belgian Malinois Cairo, already wounded in combat and nursed back to duty, was there to track anyone who fled and to warn of approaching Pakistani forces.

From which US aircraft carrier was Osama bin Laden's body buried at sea within a day of the raid?

USS Carl Vinson was in the North Arabian Sea, where the body was washed, wrapped in a white sheet and committed to the water. Officials said no country would accept the remains.

Which code word, repeated three times over the radio, told the White House that Osama bin Laden had been found?

Geronimo was followed by the letters EKIA, for enemy killed in action. Many Native Americans were offended to see the 19th-century Apache leader's name tied to the al-Qaeda chief.

Which English football club was Osama bin Laden widely reported to have supported?

Arsenal is the club named by biographer Adam Robinson, who claims bin Laden twice visited its stadium during a 1994 trip to London. A former bodyguard also said he was obsessed with the team.

In which Pakistani garrison city, home to the national military academy, was Osama bin Laden found and killed?

Abbottabad is within 100 km of the capital, Islamabad, and the hideout stood under a mile from the academy in a suburb of retired officers. Bin Laden had lived there for about five years.

Which code name was given to the helicopter raid, launched from Jalalabad in Afghanistan, that killed Osama bin Laden?

Neptune Spear nods to the trident on the raiders' special-warfare badge, the sea god's three-pronged weapon. The assault force was inside the compound walls for just 38 minutes.

The given name Osama, which bin Laden shared with a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, means which animal in Arabic?

Lion is the meaning of Usama, the spelling US intelligence preferred. The full name runs Osama, son of Muhammad, son of Awad, son of Laden.

Which elite American commando unit, officially called DEVGRU, carried out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden?

SEAL Team Six sent about two dozen operators from its Red Squadron, hand-picked for experience. Its formal name is the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

Which US president announced Osama bin Laden's death in a late-night televised address from the White House?

Barack Obama went on air at 11:35 pm in Washington, hours after the raid ended. As a candidate in 2008 he had pledged to kill bin Laden and crush al-Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden's father, who began as a porter in Jeddah, made the family fortune in which industry?

Construction made Muhammad bin Ladin rich: the Saudi royals gave his firm, founded in 1931, the exclusive right to put up religious buildings in the kingdom.

Which country's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan drew the young Osama bin Laden into supporting the mujahideen resistance?

Soviet Union troops occupied Afghanistan for a decade, and bin Laden helped recruit, fund and fly in Arab volunteers to fight them. Their withdrawal in 1989 made him a hero to many Saudis.

What does al-Qaeda, the Arabic name of the militant network founded by Osama bin Laden, mean in English?

The Base, or the foundation, is the literal sense of the Arabic. Bin Laden said the name stuck from what his fighters called a training camp during the 1980s Afghan war.

From which Afghan mountain stronghold did Osama bin Laden slip away during a US-backed assault in December 2001?

Tora Bora lies in the Safed Koh range near the Pakistani border. A CIA officer asked for Army Rangers to block the passes, but General Tommy Franks turned the request down.

Which official covers her mouth with her hand in the Situation Room photograph taken during the Osama bin Laden raid?

Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, called it the most intense 38 minutes of her life. White House photographer Pete Souza took the picture at 4:05 pm Washington time.

Which WWE champion told a cheering arena crowd in Tampa that Osama bin Laden was dead, minutes after a title match?

John Cena had just won the WWE Championship at Extreme Rules when he broke the news after the broadcast ended, and the crowd answered with a long patriotic chant.

Al-Qaeda truck bombs hit US embassies in Tanzania and which neighbouring country on the same morning in August 1998?

Kenya suffered by far the worse blast: the Nairobi bomb killed 213 people, against 11 in Dar es Salaam. The date was the eighth anniversary of US troops arriving in Saudi Arabia.

Which US Navy destroyer did Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda bomb in Aden harbour in October 2000, killing 17 sailors?

USS Cole was in port when a small boat packed with explosives came alongside. The same boat had sunk under its own load months earlier in a failed attempt on USS The Sullivans.

Osama bin Laden broke with the Saudi monarchy after it welcomed US troops when Iraq invaded which neighbour in 1990?

Kuwait fell to Saddam Hussein's army within days. Bin Laden offered to defend the kingdom with his own veterans, was refused, and saw 500,000 American troops arrive instead.

In which English university city did a teenage Osama bin Laden take an English-language course in 1971?

Oxford hosted him at about 14. He later said he turned down a chance to continue his studies in England, having decided the British were people of loose morals.

Which Saudi city did Osama bin Laden name as his birthplace, though FBI documents once listed Jeddah instead?

Riyadh is where researchers generally place his birth, in 1957 or 1958. The family moved to the Hejaz region six months later, and he went to school in Jeddah.

From which country did Osama bin Laden's father emigrate to Saudi Arabia as a poor labourer?

Yemen's Hadhramaut region sent many emigrants to the kingdom. The family traces its roots to the village of al-Rubat, and the name bin Laden comes from Osama's great-grandfather.

Which trusted member of Osama bin Laden's circle did US intelligence follow to his hideout in August 2010?

His courier was watched driving into a walled compound with no phone or internet line, which convinced analysts that someone important was hiding inside.

The CIA staged a sham vaccination drive against which disease to try to collect DNA from Osama bin Laden's household?

Hepatitis B shots were offered free in the area, but the scheme never produced a sample. Its exposure fed distrust of vaccinators in Pakistan, where polio cases then rose.

Which helicopter model, secretly modified for stealth, was lost inside the compound during the Osama bin Laden raid?

Black Hawk number one lost lift in a vortex ring state and clipped a wall with its tail. The raiders blew it up, but the tail section survived to reveal its secret design.

On which social network did local resident Sohaib Athar unknowingly report the Osama bin Laden raid as it happened?

Twitter is where Athar noted a helicopter hovering over the town at 1 am and called it a rare event. News of the death also first leaked there, about an hour before the president spoke.

Which app removed hashtags and videos about Osama bin Laden's 2002 Letter to the American People in November 2023?

TikTok acted after clips discussing the 21-year-old manifesto spread during the Gaza war. The Guardian also took its copy of the text offline, saying it lacked context.

Which actress won a Golden Globe as Maya, the CIA analyst in Kathryn Bigelow's film about the hunt for bin Laden?

Jessica Chastain also earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for the part, a fictional officer who spends years following a single lead.

Which filmmaker made the 2008 documentary Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

Morgan Spurlock, best known for Super Size Me, toured countries touched by bin Laden's story asking where he was. The CIA later found a copy of the film on bin Laden's own hard drives.

Which actor played Gary Faulkner, the American who set out alone to capture Osama bin Laden, in Army of One?

Nicolas Cage starred in the 2016 comedy directed by Larry Charles. The real Faulkner, an unemployed handyman, believed God had sent him to Pakistan on the mission.

Whom did Time name Person of the Year for 2001, passing over Osama bin Laden as the year's biggest newsmaker?

Rudy Giuliani, New York's mayor, was chosen as the face of the American response. Time's own rule, influence for better or worse, had pointed to bin Laden.

Najwa Ghanem, whom Osama bin Laden married in 1974 when both were teenagers, was already which relation to him?

His first cousin Najwa was the daughter of his mother's brother. They had eleven children, and she left Afghanistan shortly before 9/11.

Which British reporter for The Independent interviewed Osama bin Laden three times during the 1990s?

Robert Fisk met him in 1993, 1996 and 1997, and wrote that bin Laden once tried to convert him to Islam.

Which Egyptian surgeon, Osama bin Laden's longtime deputy, took over as leader of al-Qaeda after the 2011 raid?

Ayman al-Zawahiri led the network for eleven years until a CIA drone strike killed him in Afghanistan in July 2022. By 2009 US analysts already saw him as its real strategist.

Which al-Qaeda planner, captured in Rawalpindi in 2003, pitched the 9/11 hijacking plot to Osama bin Laden?

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed first proposed hijacking ten jets in 1996. Bin Laden rejected that as too complex and later backed a smaller version, and the 9/11 Commission named its author the principal architect.

Which one-eyed Taliban founder refused to hand Osama bin Laden over to the United States after 9/11?

Mullah Omar called shielding his guest a matter of Islamic honour, and his government fell before the year was out. Shrapnel had destroyed his right eye in fighting during the 1980s.

Which Saudi king stripped Osama bin Laden of his citizenship in 1994 after years of public criticism?

Fahd also persuaded the bin Laden family to cut off Osama's yearly stipend of $7 million. His decision to host American troops in 1990 had started the feud.

Which Palestinian-born scholar mentored Osama bin Laden and co-founded a recruiting bureau with him in 1984?

Abdullah Azzam ran the bureau from Peshawar, drawing volunteers from across the Arab world to the Afghan war. He died there in a 1989 car bombing by unknown assailants.

Which Afghan Northern Alliance commander did al-Qaeda assassins kill in a suicide bombing two days before 9/11?

Ahmad Shah Massoud was the Taliban's chief battlefield opponent. His killers waited weeks for an interview, then set off explosives hidden in their camera.

Which former US commando from Montana publicly claimed in 2014 to have fired the shots that killed bin Laden?

Robert O'Neill's account is disputed: other raiders say bin Laden had already been hit, and former comrades accused him of breaking their code of silence. His memoir is The Operator.

Which US admiral, then head of Joint Special Operations Command, planned and oversaw the raid on Osama bin Laden?

William McRaven hand-picked the assault force and asked for confirmation when the code word came over the radio. He later became chancellor of the University of Texas System.

Which Pulitzer-winning book by Lawrence Wright traces al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's road to the 9/11 attacks?

The Looming Tower won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and became a best-seller. It follows the American investigators as closely as the plotters they were chasing.

Which country issued the first Interpol arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden in 1998, over the killing of two Germans?

Libya wanted him for the 1994 murder of a German counter-terrorism expert and his wife, months before the United States indicted him.

In which country was Osama bin Laden's mother, Hamida al-Attas, born before she married into the family?

Syria was home to Hamida al-Attas until she became the tenth of Muhammad bin Ladin's wives. Osama was her only child by him, and the couple divorced soon after his birth.

What did the Pakistani government do with Osama bin Laden's final compound in February 2012, months after the raid?

Demolished it, to stop militants turning the house into a memorial. A year later officials announced plans for an amusement park covering the area.