Short answers, pulled from the story.
Gawker Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on the 10th of June 2016 after a jury awarded Hulk Hogan $140 million in damages in a privacy lawsuit over a sex tape Gawker had published. The company stated it could not pay the judgment or post the required $50 million appeal bond.
Univision Communications purchased all of Gawker Media's brands and assets, except for Gawker.com itself, at auction on the 16th of August 2016 for $135 million. Univision subsequently moved the properties into a new entity called Gizmodo Media Group on the 21st of September 2016.
Peter Thiel confirmed in May 2016 that he paid $10 million in legal expenses to finance lawsuits against Gawker, including Hulk Hogan's privacy case. He was reportedly motivated by a 2007 Gawker article that had outed him as gay.
Nick Denton founded Gawker Media in October 2003 under the original name Blogwire. The company was incorporated in Budapest, Hungary in 2002 and was initially headquartered at Denton's personal residence in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City.
Gawker.com was not included in the Univision acquisition and announced on the 18th of August 2016 that it would cease operations. Denton published the site's final article at 22:33 GMT on the 22nd of August 2016. The article archive remained online, and Bustle Digital Group later came to own the domain.
A major site redesign rolled out on the 1st of February 2011 caused an immediate 80% drop in overall traffic and a 50% decrease over two weeks. The new two-panel layout replaced the standard reverse-chronological blog format, and the traffic did not fully recover to pre-redesign levels until the 5th of October 2011.