Short answers, pulled from the story.
Matt Groening created Bart Simpson, who first appeared on the 19th of April 1987 in a short titled Good Night. Groening named the character after his own relatives and chose the name as an anagram for brat.
The series premiered as a half-hour show on Fox Broadcasting Company on the 17th of December 1989. This followed the initial animated shorts that began airing in 1987.
Nancy Cartwright voices Bart Simpson and her salary rose from US$30,000 per episode to $125,000 following a pay dispute in 1998. She originally auditioned for the role of Lisa on the 13th of March 1987 before switching focus to Bart.
Bart-themed T-shirts generated $2 billion in revenue within their first 14 months of sales during the early 1990s. One specific shirt reading Underachiever and proud of it man! now sits in the National Museum of American History.
Do the Bartman became the number-one song in the United Kingdom from February 16 to the 9th of March 1991. The album The Simpsons Sing the Blues peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 chart in December 1990.