Short answers, pulled from the story.
Liverpool is a port city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England, on the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary near the Irish Sea. It lies 178 miles north-west of London and is built across a ridge of sandstone hills that rise to about 230 feet at Everton Hill.
Liverpool was founded as a borough by King John's letters patent in 1207, then spelt Liuerpul. The borough was probably created because King John wanted a convenient place to embark men and supplies for his Irish campaigns, including his Irish campaign of 1209.
Liverpool became the European port most heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade during the mid- to late 18th century. Its first recorded slave ship, the Liverpool Merchant, set sail for Africa in 1699 and sold a cargo of 220 slaves in Barbados, and profits from the trade helped the town prosper and grow rapidly.
Historian Sven Beckert called Liverpool during the American Civil War the most pro-Confederate place in the world outside the Confederacy itself. Liverpool merchants helped bring cotton out of Union-blockaded ports, built ships of war for the Confederacy such as the CSS Alabama at Birkenhead, and supplied the South with military equipment and credit.
People from Liverpool are formally known as Liverpudlians but are more often called Scousers, a name derived from scouse, a local stew made popular by sailors. The Scouse name is also used for the city's distinct local accent, which began diverging from the Lancastrian accent in the late 19th century.
Liverpool pioneered the world's first commercial wet dock in 1715, the first iron-framed curtain-walled office building Oriel Chambers in 1864, the football goal net in 1889, and the world's first integrated sewer system. It was also home to the first inter-city railway link with Manchester in 1830 and the first British Nobel Prize, awarded to Ronald Ross in 1902.
The European Union selected Liverpool as European Capital of Culture for 2008, an honour that reportedly generated over 800 million pounds for the local economy within a year. The celebrations included La Princesse, a mechanical spider 20 metres high and weighing 37 tonnes, that roamed the city streets.