The Spanish expedition of Hernando de Soto passed through Mabila and other parts of the state in 1540. More than 160 years later, the French founded the region's first European settlement at Old Mobile in 1702.

Cahaba, also spelled Cahawba, was the first permanent state capital of Alabama from 1820 to 1825. Located at the confluence of the Alabama and Cahaba rivers, it had to be relocated after the town suffered several major floods. It is now a ghost town and is preserved as a state historic site, the Old Cahawba Archeological Park.

Scottsboro is home to the massive, department-store sized Unclaimed Baggage Center, which is where lost luggage gets routed after all attempts to locate owners have been exhausted. The goods are then sold, thrift store-style, to customers. The prices are low and the offerings eclectic enough to attract visitors from other states, and even from other parts of the world who make their way to Scottsboro to see what others have lost.

Huntsville's nickname, "Rocket City", is thanks largely to Wernher von Braun and his team of fellow German-born rocketeers who settled there in the 1950s. In the years that followed, Huntsville, Redstone Arsenal and NASA's new Marshall Space Flight Center showed how seriously they took the Rocket City label with a string of successes that changed the world, producing the Jupiter rocket that answered the challenge of Sputnik by launching the first American satellite and the Redstone rocket that made Alan Shepard the first American astronaut in space.

The southern longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) ecosystem once covered 90 million acres in the Southeastern United States. Today less than three million acres remain (over 97% decline) and over 30 plant and animal species associated with longleaf pine ecosystems are threatened or endangered.

In February 1861, Montgomery was chosen as the first capital of the Confederate States of America, which it remained until the Confederate seat of government moved to Richmond, Virginia, in May of that year.

In 1703, 15 years before New Orleans was even founded, French settlers in Mobile, Alabama established the first organized Mardi Gras celebration in what was to become the United States.

Since approximately one-fourth of the U.S. peanut crop is produced nearby, and much of it processed in the city, Dothan is known as "The Peanut Capital of the World". It also hosts the annual National Peanut Festival at the dedicated "Peanut Festival Fairgrounds".

The statue of the Roman god Vulcan, god of the fire and forge, is the largest cast iron statue in the world and is the city symbol of Birmingham, Alabama, reflecting its roots in the iron and steel industry. It was created as Birmingham's entry for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 World's Fair) in St. Louis, Missouri.

The Port of Mobile, located on the Mobile River at the head of the Mobile Bay and the north-central Gulf Coast, has always played a key role in the economic health of the city, beginning with the settlement as an important trading center between the French colonists and Native Americans.