The bin Laden attack was unintentionally live-Tweeted

It may have been one of the most classified and important news stories of the twenty-first century, but as it turns out, news of the U.S. military operation that killed Osama bin Laden was actually broken by a Twitter user in Pakistan, albeit unintentionally.

Sohaib Athar, an IT consultant in Abbottabad, starting tweeting Sunday after hearing helicopters overhead, writing, "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)." Later he added "I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S,” and when attention started flooding in he updated, "Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it." Why yes, yes you are.

I can't decide what my level of surprise should be at this news — incredibly high, or nonexistent. It seems like Twitter has played a role in almost every major news event of the past several months, but this is still pretty crazy, no?