Short answers, pulled from the story.
Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and the first woman to hold the office. The nickname Iron Lady originated with the Soviet Army journal Red Star, which used the phrase in reporting on her 1976 speech lambasting the Soviet Union. Thatcher embraced the label a week later in a speech to Finchley Conservatives.
Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, graduating in 1947 with a second-class honours degree. She worked as a research chemist at British Xylonite and then at J. Lyons and Co. before qualifying as a barrister in 1953. She was reportedly prouder of being the first prime minister with a science degree than the first female prime minister.
Thatcher served as prime minister from the 4th of May 1979 until the 28th of November 1990, making her the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. She won three successive general elections, in 1979, 1983, and 1987, before resigning after a Conservative Party leadership challenge.
Thatcher resigned after failing to secure an outright majority on the first ballot of a Conservative Party leadership contest in November 1990. Geoffrey Howe's resignation speech on the 13th of November was widely credited as instrumental in triggering the challenge by Michael Heseltine. Though she led with 204 votes to Heseltine's 152, she fell four votes short of the required 15% majority and withdrew after consulting her cabinet.
The Falklands War began on the 2nd of April 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. Thatcher dispatched a naval task force and Argentina surrendered on the 14th of June; 255 British servicemen and three Falkland Islanders were killed, with Argentine fatalities totalling 649. The victory contributed to a resurgence in her popularity and a Conservative landslide in the 1983 general election.
The miners' strike of 1984-85 began when the National Coal Board proposed closing 20 of 174 state-owned mines and cutting 20,000 jobs. Two-thirds of the country's miners, led by Arthur Scargill of the National Union of Mineworkers, went on strike for a year before conceding without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated at at least £1.5 billion, and by 1992 a total of 97 mines had been closed.