Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Brookings Institution was founded on the 13th of March 1916 as the Institute for Government Research. Three predecessor organizations were merged into the Brookings Institution on the 8th of December 1927.
Philanthropist Robert S. Brookings (1850-1932) founded the institution. He originally created three separate organizations that were later merged into the Brookings Institution in 1927.
A 2005 UCLA study rated Brookings at 53 on a 100-point scale from conservative to liberal, placing it near the center. Media outlets have variously described Brookings as centrist, center-left, liberal, and center-right at different times.
A 2014 New York Times investigation found that Qatar donated approximately 14.8 million dollars over four years, making it the single largest foreign donor to Brookings. Norway was also named in the investigation, and in 2018 The Washington Post reported that Brookings accepted funding from Huawei between 2012 and 2018. Between 2014 and 2018, Brookings received more than 27 million dollars from foreign sources, the third-highest amount among top-ranked think tanks.
As of the 30th of June 2019, Brookings had an endowment of 377.2 million dollars.
G. Gordon Liddy and the White House Plumbers developed a concrete plan to firebomb the Brookings Institution and steal classified files. The plot was abandoned because the Nixon administration refused to pay for a fire engine to use as a getaway vehicle.