Short answers, pulled from the story.
Life magazine was launched on the 23rd of November, 1936 by publisher Henry Luce, who had purchased the name from an 1883 humour magazine for $92,000. The founding editors were John Shaw Billings and Daniel Longwell. It was the third magazine Luce launched, after Time in 1923 and Fortune in 1930.
Life's circulation regularly reached a quarter of the U.S. population during its peak years from 1936 to the mid-1960s. From 380,000 copies in its first issue, it grew to over one million a week within four months of launch, and reached 8.5 million before Time Inc. began reducing it in 1971.
Life ceased weekly publication on the 29th of December, 1972 because its costs were rising faster than profits and 96% of its circulation came from lower-margin mail subscriptions rather than newsstand sales. Publisher Gary Valk made the announcement on the 8th of December, 1972. The magazine also lost credibility that year after backing Clifford Irving's fraudulent autobiography of Howard Hughes.
In November 1954, Dorothy Dandridge became the first African-American woman to appear on the cover of Life magazine.
Life hired war photographer Robert Capa in July 1943. He accompanied the first wave of the D-Day invasion in Normandy on the 6th of June, 1944, returning with only a handful of images, many out of focus. Life's captions attributed the blur to Capa's shaking hands; Capa disputed this, claiming darkroom error destroyed his negatives, and later titled his war memoir Slightly Out of Focus in 1947.
Life is currently owned by Dotdash Meredith. In 2024, Bedford Media, owned by Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner, announced an agreement with Dotdash Meredith to revive the magazine. Bedford Media also owns i-D magazine.