What Was The Tower Of Babel And What Happened There?

In Genesis Chapter 11, the story of the Tower of Babel is told.  At that time, according to the Bible, everyone on earth, regardless of the nation, spoke the very same language.  

The people of the earth came together at the same place, the land of Shinar, and settled there.  There they learned to make bricks by burning them and used brick for stone and tar for mortar.  Believing that they were quite important, they decided to build a city with a tower whose top would reach into heaven and they would show that they have power even beyond God.  

Because God was dissatisfied with them because "they are one people and they have one language and since they have built the tower that they caused Babel (similar to babble), God said that now nothing which they proposed to do would be impossible for them because they were many people with the same language.

Then God said to His Spirit and His Son, let's go down and confuse their language so that they cannot understand each other's speech.  He knew that without communication, they could not easily work together.

Great confusion reigned and they could not talk together to make any other plans.
He scattered the people over the face of the whole earth.  

The city and tower became known as Babel because the Lord confused the language of the whole earth.  (It has never seemed clear what was the "whole" earth at that time.)