Short answers, pulled from the story.
Alexandria was established in 1749 following a House of Burgesses vote on the 2nd of May 1749 that authorized a town at Hunting Creek Warehouse in Fairfax County. The first public auction of town lots was held on the 13th and the 14th of July 1749. Alexandria was formally incorporated as a town in December 1779.
Virginia ceded Alexandria to help form the new federal capital in 1801, and George Washington personally insisted on its inclusion. However, Alexandrians lost their voting rights and state citizenship, were barred from hosting federal buildings, and felt neglected by Congress. Economic stagnation, a rival port in Georgetown, and the desire to protect the slave trade all fueled a retrocession movement. A referendum in September 1846 returned 763 votes in favor and 222 against, and Virginia formally resumed control on the 13th of March 1847.
On the 24th of May 1861, the day after Alexandria voted to approve Virginia's secession, Union troops arrived in the city. Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth of the New York Fire Zouaves removed a large Confederate flag from the roof of the Marshall House hotel, and the proprietor James W. Jackson shot and killed him. Ellsworth's soldier Francis E. Brownell immediately killed Jackson. Both deaths were widely publicized and each man became a martyr for his side.
On the 28th of August 1939, lawyer and Alexandria native Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit-in at the city's segregated public library. It is considered among the first sit-in protests against racial segregation in United States history, establishing a tactic that the broader civil rights movement would adopt two decades later.
At the 2020 census, Alexandria had a population of 159,467, making it the sixth-most populous city in Virginia and the 169th-most populous city in the United States. The median age was 36.5 years and the city is 100% urban.
Alexandria is associated with a wide range of notable figures, including Dave Grohl, founder of Foo Fighters and drummer for Nirvana; Robert E. Lee, who grew up on Oronoco Street; Wernher von Braun, the NASA rocket scientist buried at Ivy Hill Cemetery; Jim Morrison of The Doors, who lived at 310 Woodland Terrace from 1959 to 1961; and Gerald Ford, who lived in the Parkfairfax neighborhood during his time as vice president and for the first ten days of his presidency.