Short answers, pulled from the story.
Gregor Mendel presented his paper Experiments on Plant Hybridization to the Naturforschender Verein in Brno in 1865. He had spent years observing pea plants in the monastery garden of St Thomas Abbey before this presentation.
The Avery, MacLeod, McCarty experiment in 1944 confirmed DNA as the responsible molecule for genetic information. Frederick Griffith discovered transformation in 1928 when dead bacteria transferred material to living ones prior to this confirmation.
James Watson and Francis Crick determined the structure of DNA in 1953 using X-ray crystallography data created by Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. Their model revealed two strands forming a double helix with nucleotides pointing inward.
In humans, the largest chromosome spans approximately 247 million base pairs. Genes reside on chromosomes which are long chains of DNA wrapped around histone proteins.
Chinese researchers reported editing DNA of non-viable human embryos using CRISPR technology in April 2015. Leading biologists had urged a worldwide ban on clinical use of CRISPR editing methods on the 19th of March 2015.