How did Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson tweet about Osama bin Laden’s death before the news media had even broken the story?
Just got word that will ball over the world – nation of the free … base of the fearless DAMN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN !
— Dwayne Johnson ( @TheRock)May 2 , 2011
On May 1 , 2011 , at approximately 2 PM easterly prison term , U.S. military forces stormed the Abbottabad , Pakistan compound of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden . Forty mo later , bin Laden was deadened .
An time of day after that , President Obama receive word that the mission to bolt down bin Laden was likely a achiever . By 7 p.m. , that report was firm up and Obama prepared to speak the nation . And , finally , at 11:35 p.m. , he choke on television to share the historic news .
But just over an hr before he did , wrestler - turned - actor Dwayne “ The Rock ” Johnson beat him — and the rest of the Earth — to the clout .
At 10:24 PM , Johnson twitch the message above . Although he has routinely decline to substantively annotate about the tweet , it is wide accepted by the newsworthiness medium that it consult to bin Laden ’s death .
And now , the obvious question : How did Johnson know ?
While the solution may never be known for sure , the most often cited theory is that Johnson learn the news from his cousin , a Navy SEAL ( one of the groups intact to the foreign mission to kill bin Laden ) .
It ’s also possible that Johnson , for whatever reason , was parrot a tweet fromKeith Urbahn , the former chief of faculty to former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld . Some sources say Urbahn ’s tweet actually travel out before Johnson ’s did ( by a topic of seconds ) — although even that seems to be debated .
But regardless of Urbahn or Johnson or any of the other hundreds upon century of people in - the - know well before the news went public , this historical dark finally crystallized at 11:35 premier , when President Obama mistreat up to the stump in the White House ’s East Room :
Next , take a flavour at the most striking9/11 photograph . Then , see an informativevideo timeline on the last 15 years of terrorismaround the world .