Short answers, pulled from the story.
Santa Barbara had a population of 88,665 according to the 2020 census. The city passed an ordinance in 1975 restricting residential growth to a maximum of 85,000 residents through zoning controls, though the population has since exceeded that figure.
The spill was caused by a blowout at Union Oil's Platform A on the Dos Cuadras Field, approximately 8 miles southeast of Santa Barbara in the Santa Barbara Channel, on the 28th of January 1969. Approximately 100,000 barrels of oil surged through a massive undersea break, fouling hundreds of square miles of ocean and coastline from Ventura to Goleta.
Santa Barbara is called "The American Riviera" because its geography and climate are similar to the Mediterranean coastal areas of southern France and Italy known as the Riviera. The city sits on a south-facing coastline between mountains and the Pacific Ocean, and experiences a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. The Riviera neighborhood within the city has been known by that name since at least the latter half of the 19th century.
Mission Santa Barbara was established on the 4th of December 1786, on the Feast of Saint Barbara, making it the tenth California Mission founded by the Spanish Franciscans. It was dedicated by Padre Fermin Lasuen, who succeeded Padre Junipero Serra as the second president of the California Franciscan Mission chain.
Flying A Studios was a division of the American Film Manufacturing Company that operated in Santa Barbara from 1910 to 1922, making Santa Barbara home to the world's largest movie studio during the silent film era. Flying A and other smaller local studios produced approximately 1,200 films during their time in the city, of which around 100 survive. The industry moved to Hollywood when it outgrew the area.
Two landmark pieces of legislation passed within a year of the 1969 blowout: the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Locally, outraged residents formed GOO, which stood for Get Oil Out. The spill is considered one of the formative events in the modern American environmental movement.