Short answers, pulled from the story.
Charles de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces against Nazi Germany and Vichy France during World War II. He later founded the Fifth Republic, serving as its first President, and is widely regarded as the greatest Frenchman of the 20th century.
The Appeal of the 18th of June was a radio broadcast de Gaulle made on the BBC on the 18th of June 1940, exhorting the French people not to be demoralized and to continue resisting German occupation. Few people heard it at the time; most French soldiers then in Britain were repatriated rather than joining his Free French Forces. Vichy France condemned him to death in absentia on the 2nd of August 1940.
Pied-Noir settlers seized government buildings in Algiers on the 13th of May 1958, and General Salan announced provisional power on radio, threatening civil war. President Rene Coty asked de Gaulle to form a government of national safety. On the 1st of June 1958, the National Assembly voted 329 to 224 to make him Prime Minister, granting him emergency powers for six months.
The Fifth Republic was the French constitutional order established after a referendum on the 28th of September 1958, in which 82.6 percent of voters approved a new constitution. It replaced the unstable Fourth Republic with a strong presidency. The actual text was drafted by Michel Debre based on de Gaulle's political ideas, and de Gaulle was elected its first President with 78 percent of the vote.
De Gaulle pursued a policy of "national independence" based on his conviction that France as a major power should not rely on other countries, including the United States, for its national security. This led him to withdraw from NATO's integrated military command and to build an independent French nuclear strike force, making France the world's fourth nuclear power.
Charles de Gaulle died on the 9th of November 1970 at the age of 79. He left his presidential memoirs unfinished. He had resigned the presidency in late April 1969 after losing a referendum in which he proposed greater decentralisation.