Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first known filling station was a city pharmacy in Wiesloch, Germany, where Bertha Benz refilled the tank of the first automobile on its maiden trip from Mannheim to Pforzheim back in 1888. This event marked the birth of the modern fueling industry, as the pharmacy sold gasoline as a side business shortly thereafter.
The first drive-in filling station in the United States was the 1912 Standard Oil of Ohio auto filling station at the corner of Young and Oak streets in Columbus, Ohio. The motorist drove in the front door, had his tank filled, and drove out the back, changing the way people refueled their vehicles.
People who live near filling stations are exposed to fumes and are at increased lifetime risk of cancer, with risk increased if there are multiple stations nearby. There is some evidence that living near a filling station is a risk for childhood leukemia, and gasoline can leak into the surrounding soil and water, posing many health risks.
The UK had 8,385 filling stations in 2012, down from about 18,000 in 1992 and a peak of around 40,000 in the mid-1960s. The decline in the number of filling stations in many countries is due to a variety of factors, including the rise of self-service stations, the consolidation of the industry, and the shift towards electric vehicles.
The first self-service station in the United States was in Los Angeles, opened in 1947 by Frank Urich. In Canada, the first self-service station opened in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1949, operated by the independent company Henderson Thriftway Petroleum, owned by Bill Henderson.