Birmingham lost a bid, which it only offered in lackluster fashion, to become a Delta Air Lines hub in the 1940s. Birmingham gave financial preferences to the coal industry, which included a fuel tax, and with that, Atlanta emerged as the regional hub. Atlanta runs on commercial prosperity. It is the home of Coca-Cola, the most popular soft drink company in the world, and CNN, the business that revolutionized the news, paving the way for our reality-show-like attachment to information.
