L'Express Airlines Flight 508

Birmingham International Raceway, (BIR) (formerly Fairgrounds Raceway, Birmingham Super Speedway, Birmingham Super Raceway and Birmingham International Speedway) was a 5/8-mile oval paved racetrack located at the Alabama State Fairgrounds in the Five Points West neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama. It was used primarily for late-model automobile racing.

The Alabama State Fairgrounds are located in West Birmingham, adjacent to the Five Points West shopping area. The State Fair Arena and Exposition Building covers a combined total of 110,000 square feet (10,000 m2). The 117-acre (0.47 km2) fairgrounds were acquired by the City of Birmingham in 1947. For many years, the grounds were home to the Alabama State Fair. The old grandstand (later called the Birmingham International Raceway [BIR]) was home to both automobile and harness racing, as well as shows and concerts (the BIR closed in the late 2000s). The statue of Vulcan, which is now a Birmingham landmark atop Red Mountain, was originally displayed at the Fairgrounds, either whole or in pieces during its construction.The state fair discontinued regular use of the facility because of poor attendance and high crime in the adjacent neighborhood. The Alabama State Fair Authority went bankrupt, and was dissolved sometime around the year 2001. No state fair has been held on a regular basis since; an effort to revive the state fair again in 2008 took place at the Verizon Wireless Music Center in nearby Pelham. (The "Alabama National Fair" in Montgomery is unrelated.) In 2009 there was an Alabama State Fair. "Kiddieland," a small amusement park located at the Fairgrounds, was a popular attraction for many years but closed in the early 1990s. A "Mikado" steam locomotive, #4018, which once worked on the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway was displayed on the grounds from 1952 to 2009. It has since been relocated to Sloss Furnaces. During the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s, the Fairgrounds were used by Police Commissioner Bull Connor to imprison arrested demonstrators when the city's jails were full.The Fairgrounds have also been used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a disaster outreach event.Former Fairgrounds manager Tom Drilias resigned in 1999 following a dispute over unpaid bills at another festival he ran, and was later the subject of an article in the Chicago Tribune reporting a series of legal problems.Birmingham International Raceway (BIR) was located inside the gates of the Fairgrounds; it was demolished in January 2009, to make room for the construction of a natatorium and indoor track and field facility.

The Birmingham CrossPlex is a $46 million indoor track and aquatic facility developed by the City of Birmingham, Alabama as the centerpiece of the redevelopment of the Alabama State Fairgrounds near Five Points West. The facility's 200-meter hydraulically-banked running track and 50-meter swimming and diving pool are used by high school and college teams for training and competition. The CrossPlex facility opened on August 20, 2011. The Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau has projected a $13 million economic impact for the venue's first year of operation, based on events which had been booked prior to opening. An additional warm-up pool, which would be usable by the public when not needed for events, was added soon later.

The W. F. "Bill" Harris State Fair Arena (called Bill Harris Arena or Fair Park Arena) is a 5,000-seat multipurpose indoor arena located at the Alabama State Fairgrounds. The arena is used primarily for basketball, but also hosts concerts and other events. The arena has previously served as the home of the Birmingham Magicians and the Birmingham Blitz of the American Basketball Association and the Alabama Outlawz of X-League Indoor Football. It is named in honor of Bill Harris, longtime athletics director for Birmingham City Schools. In 2022, it will be the venue for the artistic roller skating and inline hockey competitions at the 2022 World Games.

Alabama's 9th congressional district was formerly apportioned to portions of central and western Alabama from 1893 until 1963 when the seat was lost due to reapportionment after the 1960 United States Census.

Ensley is a large city neighborhood in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States. It was once a separate and thriving industrial city. It was formally incorporated on February 12, 1899, but later annexed into Birmingham on January 1, 1910 under the "Greater Birmingham" legislation.

Rickwood Field, located in Birmingham, Alabama, is the oldest professional baseball park in the United States. It was built for the Birmingham Barons in 1910 by industrialist and team-owner Rick Woodward and has served as the home park for the Birmingham Barons and the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro leagues. Though the Barons moved their home games to the Hoover Met in the suburbs, and most recently to Regions Field in Birmingham, Rickwood Field has been preserved and is undergoing gradual restoration as a "working museum" where baseball's history can be experienced. The Barons also play one regular season game a year at Rickwood Field. Rickwood Field is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Ensley High School, located in the Ensley neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama (United States), was founded in 1901 to serve the then-independent community of Ensley, which was centered on major plants operated by U.S. Steel and the American Cast Iron Pipe Company. It began with classes held at the Old Bush School before the old building, designed by architect David O. Whilldin was constructed in 1908. In 2006, Ensley High School was merged into newly built Jackson-Olin High School.

West End High School was a public high school in the Birmingham City Schools system of Birmingham, Alabama. The school's red-brick building, completed in 1930, was a collaboration between noted local architects Warren, Knight and Davis and David O. Whilldin.In 1963, a boycott of the school by white students took place after two African-American students tried to register for classes. Those who boycotted shouted "Two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate." The boycott ended in a week.On June 27, 1982, West End alumnus and shuttle pilot Henry W. Hartsfield carried a West End banner into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Under a consolidation plan approved by the Birmingham Board of Education in February 2008, West End High School was closed during the summer of 2008 with students transferring to Wenonah High School, A. H. Parker High School and Jackson-Olin High School. The closing was marked by a ceremony on June 7 with a parade, pep rally, picnic and alumni basketball game. Demolition of the school building began in March 2009. Alumni groups are active. Many classes meet annually, albeit informally. One distinguished group of alumni is known as The West End Yacht Club, which is a group of men graduated in 1968. The West End Yacht Club's members are Don Bevill, Lee Crapet, Tom Browne and James Musgrove, local executives, and an attorney, Wayne Morse, who took West End memorabilia with him when he appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States. The West End Yacht Club meets quarterly.

The Belview Heights Historic District, in Birmingham, Alabama, is a historic district which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. It runs roughly along 41st., 42nd., 43rd., 44th, and 45th Sts., and M and Martin Aves. The listing included 355 contributing buildings on 150 acres (0.61 km2).It includes 20 of the original 30 square blocks of Belview Heights, a neighborhood developed in the former town of Ensley, Alabama.The district has "an impressive assemblage of architectural styles popular in residential suburbs throughout the United States in the first half of the 20th century" and in particular "boasts one of the largest saturations of Tudor Revival architecture in Birmingham, reflecting the popularity of that particular style from the 1920s through the 1940s. The district contains examples of Colonial and Spanish Revival, American Foursquare, minimal traditional, and ranch houses as well as a large number of Bungalow/Craftsman dwellings. Of the 423 resources located in the historic district, 154 can be classified as Tudor Revival-style."It includes two non-residential buildings: Central Park Fire Station #24 (c.1915), 1644 44th St, Tudor Revival in style, a common bond brick and steel two-story building noted as "an excellent example of utilizing early twentieth-century revival-style architecture in the design of a municipal building. The Tudor Revival style fire station blends-in with the surrounding residential architecture of the district." Central Park Presbyterian Church (c.1950), designed by Birmingham architect George Turner, whose architecture includes "Spanish and Mediterranean elements, including buttresses, spiral colonettes, palladian windows, a tile roof, and an octagonal lantern resting atop a three-tiered square bell tower. From the 1920s through the 1950s, George Turner, the architect of Central Park Presbyterian Church, designed scores of dwellings throughout Birmingham in the Spanish and Mediterranean Revival Styles, including a number of churches."

The West End Masonic Temple is a Masonic building in Birmingham, Alabama. It was constructed in 1926. The temple served the masonic community until 1985, when it was sold and converted to office space. The building was destroyed in a fire on New Years Day, 1996.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, and in 2009, despite being gone for many years, was still listed.

On September 19, 1902, a stampede occurred at the Shiloh Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing 115 people.