Ever hear of Osama Bin Laden?
It seems long ago, now, when we first really heard the name Osama Bin Laden. He was the suspected ringleader of the bad guys who detonated bombs at two U.S. embassies in Africa.
Today, Osama bin Laden is supposedly (if he’s alive) blasting global warming as the fault of the United States and other Western nations, and calling for a boycott.
After I found the above-linked article in the Hartford Courant’s 1998 archives, I found this gem from the Los Angeles Times from 1993: An article about Sudan being the crossroads for Islamic fundamentalists, featuring a rich Saudi named Osama Ibn Laden.
I will admit, I do not know if the change from “Ibn” to “Bin” was a transliterative change or a misunderstanding by the original author; the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets have many different transcriptions into English, so I’d imagine it was the former.
