Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Bretton Woods agreement was signed on the 22nd of July 1944 at the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire, United States. Delegates from 44 Allied countries gathered for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference to deliberate from the 1st to the 22nd of July 1944.
Harry Dexter White drafted the U.S. blueprint for international access to liquidity as the chief international economist at the U.S. Treasury in 1942. His plan competed with the one drafted by John Maynard Keynes for the British Treasury.
The U.S. dollar became the key currency of the Bretton Woods system because it was convertible into gold at a fixed rate of $35 an ounce. All European states involved in World War II transferred large amounts of gold into the United States, which contributed to the supremacy of the U.S. dollar.
Richard Nixon closed the gold window on the 15th of August 1971 pursuant to the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970. This decision made the dollar inconvertible to gold directly except on the open market and is known as the Nixon Shock.
The end of the Bretton Woods system was formally ratified by the Jamaica Accords in 1976. By the early 1980s, all industrialized states were using floating currencies following this ratification.