Short answers, pulled from the story.
Dnipro became the only city in the Soviet Union officially closed to foreign visitors in 1959. This status persisted until 1987 when the restrictions were lifted.
The original settlement was known as Novyi Kodak established by the Zaporozhian Cossacks in 1524. The city was later renamed Yekaterinoslav in 1776 before becoming Dnipropetrovsk in 1926.
The Germans killed 15,000 Jews in Dnipro during a single two-day period in October 1941. The Jewish population was reduced to just 702 survivors by the end of the war.
Leonid Brezhnev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after rising to power through the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia. He started as a director of the Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute in 1936 and became the regional Party Secretary in 1939.
Dnipro was officially renamed from Dnipropetrovsk to Dnipro in 2016 to comply with decommunization laws. In 2022, 110 toponyms in the city were renamed including the removal of all monuments to figures of Russian culture and history.