Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, stretching roughly 200 miles from the Susquehanna River in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the south. Its 64,299-square-mile watershed covers parts of six states and all of Washington, D.C., and it drains more than 150 rivers and streams. It is a critical ecological and economic resource for Maryland and Virginia.
Chesapeake derives from the Algonquian word Chesepiooc, which referred to a village at a big river. Algonquian linguist Blair Rudes clarified in 2005 that the name does not mean "great shellfish bay" as many believed; it may have meant something like "great water" or simply indicated a village at the bay's mouth. It is the seventh-oldest surviving English placename in the United States, first recorded in 1585 or 1586.
The bay was formed by a bolide impact about 35.5 million years ago that created the Chesapeake Bay impact crater and set the conditions for the Susquehanna River valley. The bay itself began forming about 10,000 years ago when rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age flooded the Susquehanna River valley, making the bay a ria, or drowned river valley.
The Chesapeake Bay oyster population has been devastated by overharvesting, pollution, and disease. Maryland once had roughly 200,000 acres of oyster reefs; by 2008 about 36,000 acres remained. Oysters that once filtered the entire bay in about 3.3 days took 325 days to do so by 1988, and the harvest's gross value fell by 88 percent between 1982 and 2007.
Dead zones in the bay result from excess nutrients, primarily nitrogen and phosphorus, entering the water from farm runoff, urban stormwater, and sewage. These nutrients fuel algal blooms that deplete oxygen as they decompose, creating zones unable to support life. About half of the nutrient pollutant loads are traced to manure and poultry litter, and by 2010 the dead zones were estimated to kill 75,000 tons of bottom-dwelling clams and worms each year.
The Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781 was the decisive naval battle of the American Revolutionary War. The French fleet defeated the Royal Navy between Cape Charles and Cape Henry, enabling General George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau to march south and trap Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, effectively ending the war.