Short answers, pulled from the story.
David Glasgow Farragut (1801-1870) was the first officer to hold the ranks of rear admiral, vice admiral, and full admiral in the United States Navy. He is most famous for his victory at the Battle of Mobile Bay on the 5th of August, 1864, and for the command "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."
Farragut was born on the 5th of July, 1801, at Lowe's Ferry on the Holston River in Tennessee, near what is now Knoxville. After his mother died of yellow fever, he was raised by U.S. Navy officer David Porter, under whose command he first went to sea.
The Battle of Mobile Bay took place on the 5th of August, 1864. Farragut led a Union fleet into a heavily mined bay to destroy the last major Confederate port on the Gulf of Mexico. He climbed into his ship's rigging to see through the battle smoke and was lashed to the mast by his crew, then ordered the fleet forward, defeating Confederate Admiral Franklin Buchanan's squadron.
At Port Hudson in March 1863, Farragut unilaterally moved his fleet's attack timetable up to 9:00 p.m. on the 14th of March, a full nine hours ahead of the coordinated plan. Without a simultaneous Union land assault, Confederate guns concentrated on Farragut's ships and destroyed most of his flotilla. The Union Army then faced Port Hudson alone and suffered its highest casualty rate of the war.
Farragut was promoted to full admiral on the 25th of July, 1866, becoming the first person ever to hold that rank in the U.S. Navy. Before his era, the Navy had resisted using the title "admiral" entirely, preferring "flag officer" to distinguish American practice from European naval tradition.
A wide range of places carry Farragut's name, including Farragut, Tennessee (his former hometown of Campbell's Station, renamed when it incorporated in 1982), Farragut Square and two Washington Metro stations in Washington D.C., and Farragut State Park in Idaho, which was a World War II training base where more than 293,000 sailors received basic training. Two classes of U.S. Navy destroyers were also named for him, in 1934 and 1958.