Osama bin Laden was found because his family hung their clothes out to dry

One of 54 children, Osama was born in 1957 to 15-year-old Allia Ghanem, one of at least 20 women whom Mohammed, nearly 40 years her senior, had married and divorced during his lifetime.

One of 54 children, Osama was born in 1957 to 15-year-old Allia Ghanem, one of at least 20 women whom Mohammed, nearly 40 years her senior, had married and divorced during his lifetime. Osama, their only child, was 3 years old when Mohammed cast his mother aside. Allia, her son said years later, was "not a wife of the Koran, but a concubine." Rather than renounce polygamy, though, Osama bin Laden decided that his father had merely been doing it wrong. "To be a true Muslim," bin Laden believed "you should only marry the four wives sanctioned by Islam and then … treat all four of them fairly," writes national security analyst and former CNN producer Peter Bergen in "The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden" (Simon & Schuster), out Tuesday.