Short answers, pulled from the story.
The legend states that the city's name comes from Silvius Brabo throwing the hand of the giant Antigoon into the Scheldt river, creating the term Antwerpen which means hand-throwing. This story is immortalized by a statue in the main market square depicting the giant's severed hand mid-flight.
Antwerp became the economic engine of Europe by the early 16th century, accounting for 40% of world trade by the beginning of that century. The Portuguese established the city as a primary shipping base in 1504, and the Stock Exchange opened in 1531 as the world's first purpose-built commodity exchange.
On the 4th of November 1576, Spanish soldiers sacked the city during the Spanish Fury, massacring 8,000 citizens and causing over 2 million sterling of damage. The city joined the Union of Utrecht in 1579 but was captured by Alessandro Farnese in 1585 after a long siege.
85 percent of the world's rough diamonds pass through the district of Antwerp annually, with a turnover of 56 billion dollars recorded in 2011. The city has four diamond bourses and has been a center for diamond cutting since the first guild was introduced in 1584.
The MoMu ModeMuseum was founded on the 21st of September 2002 to collect, conserve, study, and exhibit Belgian fashion. The museum supports the city's fashion industry which has gained cult status due to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
Antwerp has a population of 565,039 with a metropolitan population of over 1.2 million people as of 2019. More than 50% of its population had a parent that was not a Belgian citizen at birth, and the city includes about 15,000 Haredi Jews and around 1,500 Jains.