"Sweet Home Alabama" - Lynyrd Skynyrd, 1974

I just cannot believe a story I've heard on the BBC News.

The city council of Birmingham, England recently published a pamphlet with a photo on it. But there was a minor problem - the city pictured is not Birmingham in the UK but is Birmingham, Alabama!

I see that the story is already known in the US as well. Here's the AP's version of the story, via a link on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's site.

John has made a another point about this story. Imagine printing paper leaflets for 720,000 of your citizens to thank them for recycling? Don't you think there's something a little bizarre about that?

Anyway, I think it's really nice that an English Midlands city would think to show so much gratitude to their namesake city in America's Deep South!

Oh, and it's probably worth a mention that residents of the two "Birminghams" pronounce the name of their city very differently, too! The one here is sort of like "BHIRM-ing-um", while Alabama's is more like "bur-ming-ham" (emphasis varies, depending upon what part of the US the speaker is from).

Janet

Read about what I've been listening to at Auditory Cortex!