Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ed Greenwood created the Forgotten Realms, starting the stories as a child around the age of eight. He began publishing details of the setting in The Dragon magazine in 1979, and TSR released the first official Forgotten Realms products in 1987.
The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set was published in 1987 as a boxed set containing two sourcebooks and four large color maps. It sold roughly one hundred fifty thousand copies within its first two years.
The Time of Troubles, also called the Godswar, was an event caused by the god Ao that forced the setting's deities down among mortals. TSR marked it by advancing the Realms' fictional calendar one year forward to 1358 DR.
TSR judged the Forgotten Realms to be more open ended than its existing Dragonlance setting and chose it as the default world for AD&D 2nd edition. Designer Jeff Grubb was assigned in 1986 to learn more about the campaign world Ed Greenwood had already been detailing in Dragon magazine.
Drizzt Do'Urden is a drow ranger created by R. A. Salvatore who first appeared in the 1988 novel The Crystal Shard. He is the central character across thirty-four novels and is known for rejecting the violent stereotype associated with his own drow people.
The Spellplague was a cataclysm introduced with Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition in 2008, triggered by the death of the goddess of magic, Mystra. It pushed the setting's timeline ninety-four years forward, from 1358 DR to 1479 DR, and fused Toril with its lost twin world, Abeir.