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.

After seceding, Alabama joined the Confederate States of America, and the Confederacy’s capital was initially at Montgomery. Alabama contributed about 120,000 soldiers to the war effort, though few battles were fought in the state.

3.2% of Alabama’s area is water.

The Wetumpka crater is a 5-mile (8 km)-wide meteorite impact crater located in Elmore County, just north of Montgomery. It is considered Alabama’s greatest natural disaster, created by a meteorite impact about 80 million years ago.

Winters in Alabama are generally mild, with average January low temperatures around 40 °F (4 °C) in Mobile and around 32 °F (0 °C) in Birmingham.

Suburban Baldwin County, along the Gulf Coast, is the largest county in Alabama in both land area and water area.

The agrarian Mississippian culture covered most of Alabama from 1000 to 1600 CE, with one of its major centers at the Moundville Archaeological Site.

By 1903, only 2,980 African Americans were registered to vote in Alabama, despite at least 74,000 being literate. This was a sharp decline from the more than 181,000 eligible to vote in 1900.

In the Alabama language, the word for a person of Alabama lineage is Albaamo (or variously Albaama or Albàamo in different dialects; the plural form is Albaamaha).