They were only off by a few thousand miles

Sometimes in life, it's the little details that make a big difference. Like, for instance, when you're on the city council of one of a country's largest city, you might want to, say, know what the city actually looks like:

Britain's second-largest city, Birmingham, has a new skyline _ only it belongs to its Alabama namesake. Birmingham City Council distributed 720,000 leaflets that praised residents for exceeding recycling targets, carrying a message that read: "Thank You Birmingham." The message appeared stamped across a photograph of the city's skyline. But the photo was not of Birmingham, England, but of Birmingham, Alabama.

And it's not even the first time Birmingham politicians have made this mistake.

Three lawmakers who represent Birmingham at the European Parliament accidentally used a picture of the U.S. city on their Internet site in January.

See, this is why you look at a website before it goes online, or at a leaflet before you print and distribute it. To see if there are any errors you need to correct. They used to call it proofreading.

Officials said the wrong image was selected from an Internet photo archive.

"It's human error," said Birmingham City Council spokesman Kris Kowalewski. "We accept that the wrong photo was used, but the text and detail contained in the leaflet is wholly correct."

Thank goodness. If you'd printed a bunch of incorrect text and detail, people might think you were incompetent or something.