Make use of the article to answer the questions.

Birmingham is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Alabama and the county seat of Jefferson County. The city's population was 212,237 in the 2010 United States Census. In the 2010 US Census, the Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of about 1,128,047, which is approximately one-quarter of Alabama's population.

Birmingham was founded in 1871, during the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, through the merger of three pre-existing farm towns, notably, former Elyton. It was named for Birmingham, England, the UK's second largest city and then major industrial city. The Alabama city annexed smaller neighbors and developed as an industrial and railroad transportation center, based on mining, the new iron and steel industry, and railroading. Most of the original settlers who founded Birmingham were of English ancestry. The city was developed as a place where cheap, non-unionized, and African-American labor from rural Alabama could be employed in the city's steel mills and blast furnaces, giving it a competitive advantage over unionized industrial cities in the Midwest and Northeast.

From its founding through the end of the 1960s, Birmingham was a primary industrial center of the southern United States. Its growth from 1881 through 1920 earned its nicknames as "The Magic City" and "The Pittsburgh of the South". Its major industries were iron and steel production, plus a major component of the railroading industry. Rails and railroad cars were both manufactured in Birmingham. Since the 1860s, the two primary hubs of railroading in the Deep South have been nearby Atlanta and Birmingham. The economy diversified in the latter half of the 20th century. Banking, telecommunications, transportation, electrical power transmission, medical care, college education, and insurance have become major economic activities. Birmingham ranks as one of the largest banking centers in the United States and as one of the most important business centers in the Southeast.

1. What US state is Birmingham in?
2. Are there any other places by that name?
3. Where?
4. What was important about that one?
5. How did the US city form?
6. When?
7. What was the basis of its economy then?
8. Why did businesses like it there?
9. What type of factories did they work in?
10. What nicknames did the city have during its heyday?
11. And the other?
12. Why did it get these names?
13. What did they manufacture there?
14. Why else was it important to railroad companies?
15. Are these still the basis of the city's economy?
16. WHy is the city important today?
17. WHat other business activities take place there?
18. What is the population according to a recent census?
19. Is that large for an Alabama town?
20. How does it rank among cities there?

Numbered answers:
1. Alabama
2. yes
3. Birmingham, England,
4. UK's second largest city and then major industrial city. T
5. it annexed smaller neighbors
6. 1871
7. mining, the new iron and steel industry, and railroading.
8. it had cheap, non-unionized, and African-American labor
9. steel mills and blast furnaces
10. it had 2, 1 was The Magic City
11. "The Pittsburgh of the South"
12. it's growth as an industrial city
13. Its major industries were iron and steel production, plus a major component of the railroading industry.
14. 2 major railway hubs in the south are near
15. no
16. It's a major banking center in the US
17. Telecommunications, transportation, electrical power transmission, medical care, college education, and insurance
18. 1,128,047
19. yes
20. most populous