US President Barack Obama has an unusual name. It is confirmed now. It has been proved once again … with the news of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden being killed … breaking on TV screens.

Earlier on January 1, 2007, when then Senator Barack Obama was a rising star of US politics and was considering a White House run, US broadcaster CNN mistakenly put his name as a caption on a story about Osama bin Laden.

An advertisement for a feature about the whereabouts of the al Qaeda leader carried the caption “Where’s Obama?” over images of bin Laden.

CNN, though, was quick to apologise for its “very bad typographical error”. Obama’s spokesman too said he accepted that it was an “unfortunate mistake”. “Though I’d note that the ‘s’ and ‘b’ keys aren’t all that close to each other, I assume it was just an unfortunate mistake,” spokesman Tommy Vietor had said.

The error had happened during presenter Wolf Blitzer’s news programme ‘The Situation Room’. Blitzer apologised on air for the slip. “I’m going to be making a call to him … to offer my personal apology,” he had said.

Even Obama seemed to have admitted the frequent mix-ups: “When I first started to work in public life, people would ask – ‘Hey brother, what’s with your name? You called Alabama or Yo’ Mama?’” May be his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, is not ideal for someone involved in politics!

The story was repeated again, this time in 2011. Name slip happened the world over. I too witnessed it on Indian TV channel IBN7 when the news anchor referred the killed al Qaeda leader as “Obama”. But, he too quickly realized his “innocent error” and apologized. News Ticker however took time to correct the typo. Hey … did I too … slipped …. somewhere up?

Watch the earlier videos below: