Short answers, pulled from the story.
Mobile, Alabama holds the oldest organized Carnival celebration in the United States, dating to 1703 when French Catholic colonial settlers first marked the festival at the Old Mobile Site. The Cowbellion de Rakin Society, founded in 1830, was the first formally organized and masked mystic society in the country to celebrate with a parade.
Mobile was founded in 1702 by French Canadian brothers Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, at the Old Mobile Site on the Mobile River. It served as the capital of French colonial Louisiana from 1702 to 1711 before the settlement relocated to its present location.
Mobile was the slave-trading center of Alabama until surpassed by Montgomery in the 1850s. The slave ship Clotilda, which brought the last enslaved people to enter the United States from the African trade, arrived in Mobile; among those aboard was Cudjoe Lewis, who became the last known survivor of the transatlantic slave trade.
The H. L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink an enemy ship, was built in Mobile. The Battle of Mobile Bay on the 5th of August 1864 resulted in Union forces taking control of the bay. The city surrendered on the 12th of April 1865, three days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, following Union victories at Spanish Fort and Fort Blakeley.
Airbus opened its first assembly plant in the United States in Mobile, Alabama in 2015. Located at the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley, the facility assembles the A319, A320, and A321 aircraft and began production of the Airbus A220 model in August 2019.
Mobile adopted a commission form of government with three at-large elected positions in 1911, which consistently prevented African Americans from electing candidates of their choice because only candidates winning citywide majorities could win. The system was overturned following City of Mobile v. Bolden, and in 1985 voters approved a mayor-council form of government with seven single-member districts.