Registry of Existential Status
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Check the current status of a public figure

Maybe they didn't die, or were never alive. The Registry can tell you where they are, what they currently are, and how confident it is that they exist.

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Status record

Osama bin Laden

NOW DIM CONSTELLATION OVER M6 LAY-BY

"Honestly, it's just five faint dots over the bins, and one keeps going behind a cloud" — Gwen, lorry park attendant

Existence confidence provisional
A generated photo of an anonymous stranger. It is not the person named.
The reader tests a smoke alarm at a kiosk in Istanbul, holding it at chest height like a broadcasting device, a queue of tourists forming behind him.
Location
Above lay-by 14, half a mile past Keele Services, M6 southbound
Currently
N/A
Last confirmed sighting
Tuesday, 02:40, briefly, before a gritter's lights drowned it out
Observations
Is visible only to people holding a lukewarm coffee at a slight angle.

He is now a small, dim constellation that can be seen from one lay-by on the M6 and nowhere else on Earth. From the services car park the same patch of sky is empty, which lorry drivers find mildly irritating. Even as stars, he is extremely difficult to find, and he spends most nights behind cloud.

"I've parked here eleven years and I'd never have spotted him without the leaflet," said Derek, a frozen-food driver. "You squint past the litter bin, tilt your head left, and there's a tall wobbly line of five stars. My lad was expecting something more impressive. We had a pasty instead."

Astronomers cannot agree whether the arrangement resembles a cave mouth, a VHS cassette or simply a smudge on the lay-by's single streetlamp. A minority insist it is in fact a lorry's reversing light reflected off the A500. All agree it is underwhelming and that nobody should drive out specially.

Guidance for the public

Do not stop on the hard shoulder to look; use the lay-by.

Actual status (not satire) Died 2 May 2011, aged 54. Source: Wikidata

E&OE. The Registry accepts no liability for misclassification, temporal displacement or loss of personhood arising from this record. Photographs are computer-generated approximations and almost guaranteed to show a different person entirely.