Man Inadvertantly Live-Blogs Bin Laden’s Death
Monday, 02 May 2011 | by Pat's Picks
One of the most amazing stories today is about a man named Sohaib Athar who essentially live-blogged the Osama bin Laden raid…without realizing it. Under the Twitter handle @ReallyVirtual, Athar who had just relocated to Abbottabad, Pakistan from Lahore, began grumbling about noisy helicopters near his home. First he tweeted this:
Go away helicopter - before I take out my giant swatter 
less than a minute ago via TweetDeck 
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Sohaib Athar
ReallyVirtual
He then followed it up with this tweet:
@m0hcin all silent after the blast, but a friend heard it 6 km away too… the helicopter is gone too.less than a minute ago via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet ReplySohaib Athar
ReallyVirtual
Then, perhaps, figuring out that the situation in much more serious than first thought, Athar tweets:
Since taliban (probably) don’t have helicpoters, and since they’re saying it was not “ours”, so must be a complicated situation #abbottabadless than a minute ago via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet ReplySohaib Athar
ReallyVirtual
After that, the realization that he just witnessed history seems to dawns on Athar. I recommend reading the sequence of dispatches, which give a sense that the whole attack lasted only a few minutes. No doubt we’ll hear more from Athar in days to come—he already says he’s been inundated with interview requests.
