Short answers, pulled from the story.
Columbia is nicknamed Soda City because the city's name is commonly abbreviated as "Cola," which in turn became the basis for the Soda City nickname. The name Columbia itself is a poetic term for the United States derived from the name of Christopher Columbus.
Columbia was designated as the new state capital in 1786 following the passage of a bill introduced by State Senator John Lewis Gervais. The State Legislature first met there in 1790. The city was incorporated as a village in 1805 and as a city in 1854.
Columbia hosted the South Carolina Secession Convention, which initially assembled in the First Baptist Church on the 17th of December, 1860. The city housed the state arsenal, the state military academy, and by 1865 had become the Confederacy's last breadbasket. Union forces under General William T. Sherman captured the city on the 17th of February, 1865, and much of it was destroyed by fire.
Fort Jackson is the largest United States Army installation for Basic Combat Training. It was established as Camp Jackson in 1917 after the U.S. Army selected Columbia as its site, with the first recruits arriving on the 1st of September, 1917. The installation occupies roughly two-thirds of Columbia's total land area, about 81.2 square miles.
Columbia averages 72 days per year at or above 90 degrees Fahrenheit and about 5 days at or above 100 degrees. The highest temperature ever recorded in South Carolina, 113 degrees Fahrenheit, was measured at a University of South Carolina campus weather station on the 29th of June, 2012. The city promotes itself with the slogan "Famously Hot."
The law was passed after Samantha Josephson was murdered in Columbia's Five Points neighborhood in March 2019 after mistakenly entering a car she believed was her Uber. The driver, Nathaniel Rowland, was convicted and sentenced to two life sentences without parole. The act requires rideshare drivers in South Carolina to display identifying lights and prohibits non-rideshare drivers from misrepresenting themselves; similar laws followed in New Jersey, North Carolina, and New York State.