45 Fun Facts About Birmingham, Alabama

Birmingham, Alabama, was founded in 1871 by which developer?

The Elyton Land Company, backed by bankers and other investors, laid out Birmingham where two rail lines crossed; the city later annexed the older town of Elyton itself.

Birmingham claims the 1947 celebration Raymond Weeks led as the first of which US holiday?

Veterans Day. Weeks took his idea to General Eisenhower, and in 1954 Congress renamed Armistice Day to honour veterans of all wars.

Which nickname did Birmingham earn from its explosive growth after its 1871 founding?

The Magic City. The boom drew many Black workers from rural Alabama into the city's mines and mills.

Which three steelmaking raw materials lie close together in the Birmingham District?

Ore, coal and limestone. The founders planned an industrial city beside them and named it after Birmingham, England's centre of iron and steel.

Birmingham is the seat of which Alabama county?

Jefferson. The county's 2011 bankruptcy, then the largest by a US local government, followed billions in sewer debt run up through bond deals tainted by bribes.

Which city overtook Birmingham as Alabama's largest after the 2020 census?

Huntsville. It passed Birmingham in the 2020 census, yet Birmingham's metro area remained more than twice the size of Huntsville's.

Which institution was the Birmingham metro area's largest employer in 2024?

The University of Alabama at Birmingham, the area's biggest employer, led the medical research that remade an economy once built on steel.

Which US Secretary of State was born in Birmingham in 1954?

Condoleezza Rice. At eight she lost a childhood friend, Denise McNair, in the 1963 church bombing, which she heard from her father's church a few blocks away.

The Vulcan statue on the ridge south of downtown is the world's largest statue made of what?

Cast iron. Vulcan was cast in Birmingham entirely from local iron, a giant advertisement for the city's iron industry.

Birmingham's Vulcan was made for which event, where it won a Grand Prize?

The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Back home, workers bolted an arm on wrong at the state fairgrounds, where Vulcan spent decades advertising products like Coca-Cola.

When did the neon torch Vulcan held from 1946 to 1999 glow red?

After a traffic fatality in the city. The Jaycees made Vulcan a road-safety beacon, green on days without a traffic death, until the 2004 restoration returned his spear.

Which suburb is the butt of the long-running joke about the view of Vulcan's bare backside?

Homewood. Residents joke that Vulcan is flashing them from on high, and a radio host wrote a novelty song about it called 'Moon Over Homewood'.

Which federal designation did Birmingham's closed Sloss Furnaces receive?

National Historic Landmark. Local citizens lobbied to save the furnaces after they closed, and the site became a museum of industry.

Rickwood Field, which opened on 18 August 1910, holds what distinction?

Rickwood Field is the oldest professional ballpark in the US, and its period look has made it a set for baseball films such as '42' and 'Cobb'.

Which baseball legend played for the Birmingham Black Barons at Rickwood Field as a teenager in 1948?

Willie Mays. He was still in high school, so the big-league scouts who wanted him had to wait until he graduated before they could sign him.

Which two teams played MLB's first regular-season game in Alabama, at Rickwood Field in June 2024?

Cardinals and Giants. Both wore Negro Leagues throwback uniforms, and 99-year-old Bill Greason, a former Black Barons pitcher, threw out the first pitch.

Which local minister invited Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC to Birmingham for the 1963 campaign?

Fred Shuttlesworth. A 1956 bomb destroyed his parsonage, yet he walked out unharmed and kept leading Birmingham's movement until he brought King in.

Where did Martin Luther King Jr. write his famous Birmingham letter?

King wrote the letter in his cell in the Birmingham jail after his Good Friday arrest on 12 April 1963, answering eight white clergymen who had called the protests unwise and untimely.

During Birmingham's May 1963 Children's Crusade, what did Bull Connor's men turn on young marchers?

Fire hoses and police dogs. Connor turned to force on 3 May to stop the stream of children marching from the church toward downtown.

By 10 May 1963 Birmingham's business leaders agreed to desegregate what?

Lunch counters, restrooms and fitting rooms. Stores also pledged to hire Black clerks, and the Kennedy administration went on to propose what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Birmingham's 1963 church bombing came less than three weeks after which event?

The March on Washington. Eighteen days after King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, Klansmen bombed the church on a Sunday, killing four girls.

Which Klansman, nicknamed 'Dynamite Bob', was convicted in 1977 for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing?

Robert Chambliss. Attorney General Bill Baxley reopened the cold case in 1971 and, in 1977, won the conviction that sent Chambliss to prison for life.

Which filmmaker made the documentary '4 Little Girls' about the church bombing?

Spike Lee. He earned the families' trust, and they talked to him on camera about the girls they lost.

Which green space beside 16th Street Baptist Church was the staging ground for the 1963 marches?

Kelly Ingram Park. In 1992 it was redesigned as 'A Place of Revolution and Reconciliation', filled with memorial sculptures of the movement.

Who became Birmingham's first African American mayor in 1979?

Richard Arrington Jr. The former college professor served five terms, and in 1992 he chose Johnnie Johnson as the city's first Black police chief.

Downtown Birmingham lies in which long valley, flanked by parallel ridges?

Jones Valley. After the Civil War, new rail lines through the valley and rich minerals nearby paved the way for founding a new city there.

Which international multi-sport event did Birmingham, Alabama, host in July 2022?

The World Games. Birmingham was chosen in 2015 to host the 2021 edition, and the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the games back a year to July 2022.

Birmingham's four-skyscraper downtown intersection earned what nickname?

Heaviest Corner on Earth. The boast grew out of a 1911 magazine article on the last of the four big buildings at the corner.

Which Birmingham company renamed itself in 1927 after its best-selling product, a ginger ale?

Buffalo Rock. It began in 1901 as the Alabama Grocery Company and added Buffalo Rock Ginger Ale in 1906; the drink sold well enough to rename the firm.

Which two Birmingham-based companies are major iron-pipe manufacturers?

ACIPCO and McWane both make ductile-iron pipe; ACIPCO's founder, John Eagan, willed the company in trust to its employees when he died in 1924.

Which country-music singer was born in Birmingham in 1947?

Emmylou Harris. Gram Parsons sought her out while she was singing in D.C.-area clubs, then brought her to Los Angeles in 1972 to sing on his first solo album.

Which ridge immediately south of downtown gives Vulcan his perch?

Red Mountain. Mines along the ridge once supplied the iron ore that fed the city's furnaces.

Which industrialist founded the iron town of Bessemer, southwest of Birmingham?

Henry DeBardeleben. His land company laid out the town and named it after Henry Bessemer, inventor of the era's leading steelmaking process.

Which Birmingham suburb gave its name to a magnitude-5.1 earthquake in 1916?

Irondale. The largest earthquake on record within Alabama, it knocked down chimneys near its epicentre east of Birmingham.

Which downtown venue hosts Birmingham's biggest indoor concerts?

The BJCC. When its arena opened in 1976, the Toronto Toros hockey team moved in and became the Birmingham Bulls.

Which Olympic track-and-field star was born in Birmingham in 1961?

Carl Lewis. His family moved to Willingboro, New Jersey, when he was two, and his parents' track club there set him on the road to nine Olympic golds.

Which reserve east of downtown is one of the largest urban wild spaces in the United States?

Ruffner Mountain Nature Center, a 1,040-acre preserve on a former iron-mining ridge east of downtown, is one of the largest privately held urban nature preserves in the United States.

Birmingham's stadium nicknamed 'The Old Gray Lady' is named in honour of which organisation?

The American Legion. Legion Field was long Alabama's main home venue, until the Crimson Tide moved its big home games to Tuscaloosa by 2000.

Which rivalry game was played in Birmingham every year from 1948 to 1988?

The Iron Bowl. Birmingham got the game because in 1948 its stadium held far more fans than either campus, and the name nods to the city's iron industry.

Which basketball superstar spent the 1994 season playing for the Birmingham Barons?

Michael Jordan. He had retired from the NBA in 1993, then came out of retirement and returned to basketball in 1995.

Since 1986, the Birmingham Barons have been the Double-A affiliate of which MLB club?

Chicago White Sox. When talks with the city over a better stadium failed, the Barons left for suburban Hoover, then returned to Birmingham in 2013.

What is the nickname of the Alabama Theatre's 1927 Mighty Wurlitzer organ?

Big Bertha. When the theatre's owners went bankrupt, organ volunteers were refused permission to remove it, so they raised money and bought the whole theatre.

Which 19-acre downtown green space, opened in 2010, do locals call 'Birmingham's Living Room'?

Railroad Park, 19 acres beside the rail lines downtown, opened in September 2010 and was partly built from bricks salvaged from surrounding warehouses; since 2016 the Rotary Trail greenway has linked it toward Sloss Furnaces.

Which event drew the record crowd at Birmingham's 'Old Gray Lady' stadium?

A 1996 Olympic soccer match. The Atlanta Games spread their soccer tournament across five cities, and the United States played Argentina here.

Birmingham's Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum holds the world's largest collection of what?

The Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, opened in 2003 beside a racetrack east of the city, holds more than 1,400 motorcycles, recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest motorcycle collection in the world.