Short answers, pulled from the story.
Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, home to more than 9.8 million people. It is the heart of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world, and the Middle East, and a key global city for finance, commerce, academics, and the arts.
Cairo is titled "the city of a thousand minarets" because of its preponderance of Islamic architecture. It holds one of the greatest concentrations of historical Islamic architectural monuments in the world, particularly around the old walled city and the Citadel in the area known as Islamic Cairo.
Cairo was founded in 969 by the Fatimid Caliphate. Its name comes from the Arabic al-Qahirah, meaning 'the Vanquisher' or 'the Conqueror,' given by Caliph al-Mu'izz, with a full formal name of al-Qahirah al-Mu'izziyyah, 'the Vanquisher of al-Mu'izz.'
The Giza pyramid complex and the ancient cities of Memphis and Heliopolis lie within reach of present-day Cairo. Memphis was the capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom, and Heliopolis was a major religious centre, largely destroyed by the Persian invasions of 525 BC and 343 BC.
The Greater Cairo metropolitan area is one of the largest in the world by population, with over 22 million people, and is the largest metropolitan area in Africa. Between 1947 and 2006 the population of Greater Cairo grew from 2,986,280 to 16,292,269.
Cairo's Tahrir Square was the focal point of the 2011 Egyptian revolution against President Hosni Mubarak. More than 50,000 protesters first occupied the square on the 25th of January, and after weeks of mainly non-violent protest Mubarak resigned on the 11th of February, with at least 846 people killed and 6,000 injured.