A company of cavalry soldiers from Huntsville, Alabama, joined Nathan Bedford Forrest’s battalion in Kentucky. Their uniforms had yellow trim, leading to them being nicknamed “Yellowhammer,” a name later applied to all Alabama troops in the Confederate Army.

Alabama has a range of habitats, including the Tennessee Valley, Appalachian Plateau, Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians in the north, Piedmont, Canebrake, Black Belt in the central region, and Gulf Coastal Plain and beaches along the Gulf of Mexico in the south.

Alabama has a coastline along the Gulf of Mexico on the extreme southern edge of the state.

Thomas Bassett was a loyalist to the British monarchy during the Revolutionary era and one of the earliest white settlers in Alabama outside Mobile. He settled in the Tombigbee District during the early 1770s.

Hurricane Ivan, a category 3 storm upon landfall, struck Alabama in 2004, causing over $18 billion in damage. It was one of the most destructive storms in the state’s modern history.

Baldwin and Mobile counties became part of Spanish West Florida in 1783, part of the independent Republic of West Florida in 1810, and finally part of the Mississippi Territory in 1812.

The peak tornado season varies across Alabama, with a primary season in the spring and a secondary season in November and December.

The French controlled Alabama from 1702 to 1763 as part of La Louisiane. After the French lost to the British in the Seven Years’ War, it became part of British West Florida from 1763 to 1783. Following the American ...Read more

Alabama is 23rd in the amount of surface water in the United States.

Alabama’s oldest city is Mobile, which was founded by French colonists (Alabama Creoles) in 1702 as the capital of French Louisiana.