Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Battle of Hampton Roads was a two-day naval engagement fought on March 8 and 9, 1862, during the American Civil War in the waterway off the Virginia coast near Norfolk. It was the first combat between ironclad warships, pitting the Confederate CSS Virginia against Union wooden warships on the first day and the Union ironclad USS Monitor on the second.
The Battle of Hampton Roads marked the first combat between ironclad warships and immediately ended the era of wooden-hulled warships in modern navies. Great Britain and France halted further wooden-ship construction after the battle, Russia launched ten Monitor-type vessels in response, and the rotating gun turret demonstrated by Monitor became standard in warships of all types, eventually inspiring the modern battleship.
CSS Virginia spent nearly a month in drydock for repairs after the battle and was commissioned again on the 4th of April 1862, under the command of Commodore Josiah Tattnall III. When Confederate forces abandoned Norfolk on the 9th of May 1862, without consulting the Navy, Virginia could not escape up the James River because the river was only 18 feet deep in places. Tattnall ordered her destroyed; she was towed to Craney Island, set afire, and her magazine exploded before dawn the following day.
USS Monitor remained on blockade duty after the battle. On Christmas Day, 1862, she was ordered to Beaufort, North Carolina. While being towed down the coast under Commander John P. Bankhead, worsening seas caused her to take on water, which extinguished her engines. She sank in the early hours of the 31st of December 1862-16 miles off Cape Hatteras at a depth of about 240 feet, taking 16 men down with her.
On the first day, CSS Virginia was commanded by Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan, who was wounded when a rifle shot pierced his left thigh. On the second day, command passed to Lieutenant Catesby ap Roger Jones. USS Monitor was commanded by Lieutenant John L. Worden, who was temporarily blinded when a Virginia shell drove fragments through the pilot house viewing slits into his eyes.
The USS Monitor Center at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, officially opened on the 9th of March 2007, and holds the recovered turret, two Dahlgren guns, the anchor, steam engine, and propeller from Monitor. The anchor of CSS Virginia is displayed on the lawn in front of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, and some of the iron used in Virginia's plating is on display at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth.