Short answers, pulled from the story.
English chemist Charles Hatchett identified niobium in 1801, working from a mineral sample sent from Connecticut in 1734 by John Winthrop, grandson of John Winthrop the Younger. Hatchett named the element columbium and the mineral columbite. German chemist Heinrich Rose confirmed in 1846 that tantalum ores contained a second, distinct element, which he named niobium.
Hatchett's original name columbium, honoring the poetic name for the United States, remained the standard in American scientific journals while Europe adopted niobium. The name niobium was chosen at the 15th Conference of the Union of Chemistry in Amsterdam in 1949 and formally adopted by IUPAC the following year as a compromise: IUPAC accepted tungsten over wolfram in deference to North American usage, and niobium over columbium in deference to European usage. Some US metallurgists still use columbium today.
An estimated 90% of the 44,500 tonnes of niobium mined in 2006 went into high-grade structural steel, where a concentration of less than 0.1% significantly improves toughness, strength, and weldability. The second-largest application is superalloys for jet engines, gas turbines, and rocket components. Niobium-titanium and niobium-tin alloys are also used as superconducting wire in MRI scanners and particle accelerators.
Brazil dominates global niobium production. Two Brazilian mines, one at Araxá in Minas Gerais owned by CBMM and one near Catalao in Goias owned by China Molybdenum, together produce about 88% of the world's supply. The Niobec mine in Saint-Honore, Quebec, Canada, accounts for between 7% and 10% of global output.
Niobium-titanium and niobium-tin alloys are used as type II superconductor wire wound into coils for superconducting magnets. In 1992 alone, more than one billion US dollars' worth of clinical MRI systems were built using niobium-titanium wire. The Large Hadron Collider uses 600 short tonnes of superconducting strands that include niobium alloys.
C-103 is an alloy of 89% niobium, 10% hafnium, and 1% titanium, developed jointly by Wah Chang Corporation and Boeing in the early 1960s. Wah Chang produced the first 500 pounds in 1961. It was used for the descent engine nozzle of the Apollo Lunar Modules and is also used in the nozzle of SpaceX's Merlin Vacuum engines on the Falcon 9 rocket's upper stage.