Short answers, pulled from the story.
Kursk first appears in written records in 1032, making it the oldest city in Kursk Oblast. It is also mentioned in The Tale of Igor's Campaign, where Prince Igor praises his Kurskan warriors as fighters "swaddled under war-horns, nursed under helmets, fed from the point of the lance."
The Battle of Kursk in July 1943 is the single largest battle in recorded history, with over 6,000 armored vehicles fighting at close range near the city. It was triggered by Germany's Operation Citadel, the last major German offensive against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front.
The Kursk Magnetic Anomaly is the world's largest known iron-ore reserve, located in the Kursk region. The iron content of the ore there ranges from 35% to 60%, making it a major driver of the regional industrial economy.
Kursk is associated with painter Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935), composer Georgy Sviridov (1915-1998), and the revered Orthodox monk Seraphim of Sarov, who as a child survived a fall from the city's cathedral bell tower. Olympic boxing champion Alexander Povetkin and Olympic cycling champion Valery Chaplygin are also from Kursk.
The Kursk Nuclear Power Plant is located in Kurchatov, about 40 kilometres south-west of Kursk. It incorporates four RBMK-1000 reactors of the same type involved in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster; the oldest has been operational since 1977 and the newest since 1986.
The name Kursk likely derives either from the Kur River, with the Slavic suffix -sk added, or from the Proto-Slavic word krivъ, meaning "bent" or "curved."