Short answers, pulled from the story.
The 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes were caused by fractures in the North American Plate at the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The zone is a web of ancient cracks dating from the time of the supercontinent Rodinia. New Madrid lies far from any plate boundary, which makes the scale of the seismic activity unusual.
The 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes included nearly 2,000 events, with the strongest reaching approximately magnitude 8. They are the most powerful non-subduction zone earthquakes ever recorded in the United States. The shaking was felt as far away as the East Coast.
New Madrid was renamed around 1780 under Spanish Governor Bernardo de Gálvez and Manuel Pérez, Lieutenant Governor of Upper Louisiana. The settlement had originally been called L'Anse a la Graise by the mixed Native American and European trading community that founded it. Spain controlled the land west of the Mississippi at the time and welcomed American settlers who swore allegiance to the Spanish crown.
Kentucky Bend is a sharp oxbow in the Mississippi River adjacent to New Madrid, Missouri, where the river curves so dramatically that an exclave of Fulton County, Kentucky, is almost entirely surrounded by other states. Scientists expect the Mississippi will eventually cut across the neck of that peninsula and isolate the Kentucky territory as an island. New Madrid sits on the north side of this bend.
Starting in 1838, New Madrid was on the Trail of Tears route, serving as a waypoint for thousands of Native Americans forcibly removed from Eastern lands to Oklahoma. The town had ironically offered refuge to Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, and Creek refugees in the early 1780s.
The population of New Madrid was 2,787 at the 2020 census. The city covers a total area of 4.53 square miles and serves as the county seat of New Madrid County. The median household income was $41,445 according to the same census data.