Short answers, pulled from the story.
Saint Vindicianus, the Bishop of Cambrai, made the first recorded reference to the place in 695 when it was still a hamlet. Traces of human settlement go back to the Stone Age with vestiges and place-names related to the civilisation of megaliths near the Grand-Place.
The official founding of Brussels is usually said to be around 979 when Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine, transferred the relics of the martyr Saint Gudula from Moorsel to Saint Gaugericus' chapel. During late antiquity, the region was home to Roman occupation as attested by archaeological evidence discovered on the current site of Tour & Taxis.
In 1695, during the Nine Years' War, King Louis XIV of France sent troops to bombard Brussels with artillery. The Grand-Place was destroyed along with 4,000 buildings which represented a third of all the buildings in the city.
On the 21st of July 1831, Leopold I, the first King of the Belgians, ascended the throne after the Belgian Revolution began in Brussels following a performance of Auber's opera La Muette de Portici at the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie.
Brussels was historically Dutch-speaking using the Brabantian dialect but since the 19th century French has become the city's predominant language due to rapid assimilation of the local Flemish population and immigration from France and Wallonia. From the mid-20th century, the number of monolingual French-speakers surpassed the number of mostly bilingual Flemish inhabitants.
The Grand-Place is the main attraction in the city centre and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998. Other notable sites include Manneken Pis, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Koekelberg completed only in 1969, and the Atomium which was originally built for the 1958 World's Fair.