| Mobile | |
| City in the United States | |
| Location | |
| State | Alabama |
| Coordinates | 30°43’39.61″N, 88°3’9.62″WL |
| General | |
| Surface | 466.34 km² |
| – country | 361.22 km² |
| – water | 105.12 km² |
| Residents (April 1, 2010) |
195,111 (540 inhabitants/km²) |
| Website | cityofmobile.org |
The Port of Mobile
According to Existingcountries, Mobile is a city in the American state of Alabama and has 198,915 inhabitants. This makes it the 91st city in the United States (2000). Its surface area is 305.2 km², making it the 49th largest city.
History
Mobile was founded in 1702 by the French as Fort Louis de la Mobile. Already in 1703 they celebrated Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday), which was thus introduced in America and still takes place in New Orleans.
In 1763 the city was handed over to the United Kingdom under the Treaty of Paris, which owned it until the Battle of Fort Charlotte in 1780, when the British were expelled. Between 1780 and 1830 the Spaniards controlled the city; since then, Mobile has been American.
Train Disaster
On Friday, September 22, 1993, one of the worst train disasters in United States history took place in this city. An unlicensed pusher pilot took a wrong turn on the River Mobile and crashed into the bridge. Normally the signals should jump to red, but in this case only the rails were bent and the connection was not broken. The entire train, the Sunset Limited, derailed and ended up in the water. 47 people were killed and 103 were injured.
Demographics
13.7% of the population is older than 65 and 30.2% consists of single -person households. Unemployment is 5.9 % (census figures 2000).
About 1.4% of Mobile’s population is Hispanic and Hispanic, 46.3% of African origin and 1.5% of Asian origin.
The population increased from 198,417 in 1990 to 198,915 in 2000.
Climate
In January the average temperature is 9.9 °C, in July it is 27.9 °C. Annual average rainfall is 1624.6 mm (data based on the measurement period 1961-1990).
Economy
The Port of Mobile grew into the eighth largest port in the country in 2014, with a shipped volume of 64.3 million tons. The harbor is at the mouth of the Mobile River where it flows into Mobile Bay. The public, deep-water terminals provide direct access to a hinterland of more than 2,000 km of navigable inland and shoreline waterways serving the Great Lakes, the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys (via the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway), and the Gulf of Mexico. The Alabama State Port Authority owns and operates the public terminals in the Port of Mobile. The public terminals handle container, bulkand general cargo, roll-on/roll-off and heavy lift loads. The port is also home to private bulk terminal operators. The container, general cargo and bulk facilities have immediate access to two major highways and five Class I railroad tracks.
BAE Systems Southeast Shipyards’ shipyards were able to handle the largest vessels in dry docks, employing up to 800 people, but closed in 2018.
An industrial zone for the aviation sector was opened in the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley, south of the city center. It became the seat of the Continental Aircraft Engine Company, which has been active since 1929, a manufacturer of aircraft engines, initially a subsidiary of the Continental Motors Company. In 1969 the company was acquired by Teledyne, since 2010 it is a subsidiary of China Aviation Industry Corporation.
Airbus also opened a new factory in Aeroplex on September 13, 2015. In this factory, which required an investment of about 500 million euros, initially only the Airbus A320 was made. In 2017, production was already operating at the maximum foreseen capacity with a production of fifty aircraft on an annual basis. With the announcement in 2017 of the collaboration with Bombardier Aerospace for the construction of the Bombardier C-series, US production was also planned in Mobile, as a second production line next to the Mirabel plant. In 2018 the name was changed to Airbus A220, from August 2019 aircraft were also manufactured in Mobile, in 2020 Bombardier sold its share to Airbus and left the commercial aviation industry and the first Airbus A220 rolled out of the hangars of Mobile. In the mid-1920s, the Airbus Mobile plant is planned to produce about 50 A220 aircraft per year, the Mirabel plant about 100, three times more than current production volumes in 2021.
Sights
- In Mobile’s Langan Park City Park is the Mobile Museum of Art
City Link
Mobile maintains city ties with the following cities:
- Cockburn (Australia) (2005)
- Heze (China)
- Tianjin (China)
- Havana (Cuba) (1993)
- Worms (Germany) (1974)
- Makassar (Indonesia)
- Ariel, West Bank, (Israel)
- Gaeta (Italy)
- Ichihara (Japan) (1993)
- Veracruz (Mexico)
- Bolinao (Philippines) (2005)
- Katowice (Poland) (1990)
- Constanta (Romania)
- Rostov-on-Don (Russia) (1988)
- Košice (Slovakia) (1992)
- iLembe (South Africa)
- Pyeongtaek (South Korea)
- Malaga (Spain) (1965)
Nearby places
Mobile
Chickasaw (10 km)
Daphne (21 km)
Prichard (8km)
Saraland (16 km)
Satsuma (20 km)
Spanish Fort (17 km)
Theodore (16 km)
Tillmans Corner (14 km)
Born in Mobile
- Ethan Hitchcock (1835-1909), entrepreneur and Secretary of the Interior
- James Reese Europe (1880-1919), big band leader
- Cootie Williams (1910-1985), jazz trumpeter
- Eugene Sledge (1923–2001), Marine, Professor and Writer
- Urbie Green (1926–2018), jazz trombonist
- Ward Swingle (1927–2015), jazz pianist, singer, leader of The Swingle Singers, arranger and film composer
- Yolande Fox (1928–2016), model and opera singer
- Hank Aaron (1934-2021), baseball player
- Gregory Benford (1941), science fiction writer and physicist
- Don Siegelman (1946), politician
- Paul Bearer (1954–2013), manager and professional wrestler
- Bradley Byrne (1955), lawyer and Republican politician
- Kathryn Hire (1959), astronaut
- Tim Cook (1960), CEO of Apple, Inc
- Glen Day (1965), golfer
- Fennis Dembo (1966), basketball player
- Orlando Jones (1968), comedian and film and television actor
- Laverne Cox (1972), actress
- Aron Jóhannsson (1990), football player
