h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama as well as a regional hub of transportation, commercial, and cultural activity. The city has a diversified industrial base with manufactures that include railroad and aircraft equipment, chemicals, valves, automotive parts/equipment and plastics.
Sloss Furnaces National Historical Landmark commemorates Birmingham's industrial past. A 17-m iron statue, given to the city of Birmingham by France, of Vulcan the Roman god of fire and patron of metalworkers, dominates the city from the summit of Red Mountain. Europeans first settled the site in 1813 as the town of Elyton. During the American Civil War (1861-1865) the area's rich iron-ore deposits were used by the Confederates to build a blast furnace. The modern city was founded in 1870 at the intersection of two newly constructed railroads and named by a land company for Birmingham, England. Besides iron ore, the area had deposits of coal, limestone, bauxite, and sand. The city grew rapidly as an industrial centre after 1899, when steel was first manufactured. Birmingham was a major iron- and steel-producing centre and as such was known as the Pittsburgh of the South.
In the 1960s, as one of the Souths most segregated cities, it was a focus of the civil rights movement. In early 1963 Martin Luther King, JR. and other civil-rights leaders organised large demonstrations at lunch counters and other sites to protest racial discrimination. When city police attacked the peaceful demonstrators with police dogs and fire hoses, media coverage triggered a national outcry. Here King wrote his famous "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," which set forth his theory of non-violent direct action.
monsy

Very good, Monsy! I'm impressed!!!

One quick added note.......in the 80's, the city found it's ecomomic base crumbling due to the onslaught of cheaper foriegn steel. Not a populace given to surrender, they fell behind a local research colleges' lead and now have developed their city into one of the foremost medical centers in the Southern US.

NM