Short answers, pulled from the story.
Kurt Vonnegut survived the firebombing of Dresden on the 13th of February 1945. He hid three stories underground in a meat locker alongside hanging corpses while Allied forces unleashed a massive firestorm upon the German city. Approximately 25,000 civilians died during this event.
Kurt Vonnegut's mother was Edith, who descended from the wealthy Lieber family. She took her own life by overdose on the 14th of May 1944, just days before Vonnegut was to be deployed to Europe.
Kurt Vonnegut's brother Bernard, an atmospheric scientist, worked on cloud-seeding projects that inspired the concept of ice-nine. Ice-nine is a form of water that is solid at room temperature and can freeze all other water it touches. Vonnegut fictionalized his brother's inventions as ice-nine in the novel Cat's Cradle.
Slaughterhouse-Five was published by Kurt Vonnegut on the 1st of January 1969. The novel tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time, and rose to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list.
Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007 after publishing his final book A Man Without a Country in 2005. The final book became a bestseller and reflected his anger at the George W. Bush administration and his belief in the importance of civic engagement.