Short answers, pulled from the story.
Leeds is the largest legal and financial centre outside London, with the financial and insurance services industry worth £13 billion to the city's economy. It has the most diverse economy of all the UK's main employment centres and the highest ratio of private to public sector jobs among the UK's Core Cities, with 77% of its workforce in the private sector. The city generates 5% of England's total economic output at £60.5 billion.
Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed in October 1888 by Louis Le Prince using a single-lens camera and Eastman's paper film, is the oldest surviving film in existence. It was shot in Leeds, several years before the comparable work of the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison. A second Leeds resident, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, filmed the second-oldest surviving film.
Leeds was awarded city status in 1893 by Queen Victoria. The Borough of Leeds had been created much earlier, in 1207, when Maurice Paynel, lord of the manor, granted a charter to a small settlement close to the river crossing.
Leeds is served by five universities: the University of Leeds (chartered 1904, approximately 31,000 students), Leeds Beckett University (roots in the Mechanics' Institute of 1824), Leeds Trinity University (became a university in 2012), Leeds Arts University (founded as Leeds School of Art in 1846, became a university in 2017), and the University of Law (moved its Leeds centre from York in 2014). The city has the UK's fourth-largest student population.
Leeds has a long history of proposed but unbuilt transit schemes. An underground system was planned in the 1940s but was shelved because of the Second World War. The Leeds Supertram, costed at £500 million, was cancelled in 2005 after £40 million had been spent. A trolleybus plan worth £250 million was cancelled in May 2016. A tram system for the city and wider region was announced in 2023.
Musical acts from Leeds include Soft Cell, Kaiser Chiefs, the Sisters of Mercy, Alt-J, Corinne Bailey Rae, the Wedding Present, Gang of Four, Utah Saints, and Melanie B of the Spice Girls. The Who recorded their live album Live at Leeds at the University of Leeds Refectory on Valentine's Day 1970, and it has been cited by music critics as the best live rock recording of all time.