“Dixie Alley” refers to the area of Alabama and Mississippi that is most affected by tornadoes, as distinct from the Tornado Alley of the Southern Plains.

Some scholars suggest the word may come from the Choctaw alba (meaning ‘plants’ or ‘weeds’) and amo (meaning ‘to cut’, ‘to trim’, or ‘to gather’), potentially meaning ‘clearers of the thicket’ or ‘herb gatherers’.

Alabama ranks fifth in the nation for the diversity of its flora, with nearly 4,000 pteridophyte and spermatophyte plant species.

Alabama was a Spanish territory in the sixteenth century until the French acquired it in the early eighteenth century. The British won the territory in 1763, and Spain held Mobile as part of Spanish West Florida until 1813.

In the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in cases like Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims that legislative districts must be based on population rather than geographic counties. This principle led to the redistricting of Alabama’s legislative ...Read more

Snow is rare in much of Alabama, but areas north of Montgomery may receive a dusting of snow a few times each winter, with occasional heavy snowfalls every few years.

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.

The Alabama Territory was created by the United States Congress on March 3, 1817.

The 1901 Constitution of Alabama included provisions for voter registration that effectively disenfranchised large portions of the population, including nearly all African Americans, Native Americans, and tens of thousands of poor European Americans. It also required racial segregation of ...Read more