Short answers, pulled from the story.
San Antonio was founded in 1718 when Father Antonio de Olivares, with the help of the Payaya and Pastia peoples, built the Misión de San Antonio de Valero and the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar. The area had been named San Antonio in 1691 by a Spanish expedition on the feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua. It became the first chartered civil settlement in present-day Texas in 1731.
The Battle of the Alamo took place from the 23rd of February to the 6th of March 1836, when Mexican forces under Santa Anna besieged the fortified mission held by a Texian volunteer force under joint command of William Barrett Travis and James Bowie. Every defender was killed. The fallen were remembered as martyrs for Texas freedom, and "Remember the Alamo" became the rallying cry of the Texian Army.
San Antonio's five Spanish frontier missions were collectively designated UNESCO World Heritage sites on the 5th of July 2015. They are the four missions in the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park plus The Alamo, making them the 23rd U.S. site on the World Heritage list and the first in Texas. In 2017, San Antonio also received UNESCO designation as a City of Creativity for Gastronomy.
San Antonio had a population of 1,434,625 at the 2020 census, making it the seventh-most populous city in the United States. At that census, 63.9 percent of residents identified as Hispanic or Latino, the largest majority-Hispanic population of any large U.S. city. Non-Hispanic white residents made up 23.4 percent of the population, Black and African American residents 6.5 percent, and Asian residents 3.2 percent.
San Antonio earned the nickname "Military City, USA" because it hosts one of the largest concentrations of military bases in the United States, including Lackland Air Force Base, Brooke Army Medical Center, Randolph Air Force Base, and Fort Sam Houston. Lackland is the Air Force's only location for enlisted basic training, processing more than 35,000 recruits annually. Fort Sam Houston hosts the Military Education and Training Campus, described as the largest medical education center in the world.
San Antonio is home to two Fortune 500 companies: Valero Energy and USAA. H-E-B, ranked the fifth-largest private company in the United States, is also headquartered in the city. Other companies based there include Whataburger, Rackspace, Frost Bank, Pabst Brewing Company, and the North American Development Bank, a development finance institution jointly held by the governments of the United States and Mexico.