Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Shrine of the Bab in Haifa is the second holiest place on Earth for followers of the Bahai Faith, after the Shrine of Baha'u'llah in Acre. The remains of the Bab, founder of the Babi Faith and forerunner of Baha'u'llah, were moved to a shrine on Mount Carmel in 1909. The surrounding Bahai gardens were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008.
During Operation Bi'ur Hametz on the 21st and the 22nd of April 1948, Haganah forces attacked Arab neighborhoods with mortars and gunfire, triggering a mass flight of residents to the port. According to The Economist at the time, only 5,000-6,000 of the city's 62,000 Arabs remained by the 2nd of October 1948. The Old City of Haifa was subsequently demolished.
The Carmelit is Haifa's underground subway, a subterranean funicular railway running from Paris Square downtown to Gan HaEm on Mount Carmel. With a single track, six stations, and two trains, it is listed in Guinness World Records as the world's shortest metro line. Haifa is the only city in Israel with an underground rapid transit system of this kind.
The Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, was founded in 1912 and became the first higher education institution in the world to teach in Hebrew. It now has 18 faculties and 42 research institutes. Two of its alumni, Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko, received Nobel Prizes in Chemistry.
Settlement in the Haifa area spans more than 3,000 years. The earliest known settlement in the vicinity was Tell Abu Hawam, a small port and fishing village established during the Late Bronze Age in the fourteenth century BCE. The city changed hands among more than a dozen rulers over the millennia, including Canaanites, Romans, Crusaders, and Ottomans.
Matam, the largest and oldest high-tech park in Israel, hosts research and manufacturing facilities for Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Amazon, Magic Leap, Motorola, and others. The park opened in the 1970s as the first dedicated high-tech park in Israel and is located at the southern entrance to the city.