Short answers, pulled from the story.
Nizhny Novgorod was founded on the 4th of February 1221 by Prince George II of Vladimir, who built a wooden hillfort at the confluence of the Volga and Oka rivers. It was the easternmost Russian settlement until the founding of Kurmysh in 1372.
The city was renamed Gorky in 1932 to honour the writer Maxim Gorky, born there in 1868 as Alexey Maximovich Peshkov, who had returned to the Soviet Union at Joseph Stalin's invitation. The original name Nizhny Novgorod was restored in 1990, at the same time the city's closed status for foreigners was lifted.
Nizhny Novgorod hosted six matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup at the Nizhny Novgorod Stadium, which was built on the spit where the Volga and Oka rivers meet and holds 44,899 people. The matches included the Uruguay-France quarter-final on the 6th of July 2018.
At the All-Russia industrial and art exhibition held in Nizhny Novgorod in 1896, engineer Alexander Popov demonstrated the world's first radio receiver. At the same event, engineer Vladimir Shukhov unveiled the world's first hyperboloid tower and the first lattice shell-coverings.
In 1612, the merchant Kuzma Minin raised a national militia in Nizhny Novgorod and placed it under the command of Prince Dmitry Pozharsky. The army expelled Polish troops from Moscow, ended the Time of Troubles, and established the Romanov dynasty. Minin's remains are buried in the Kremlin, and the main square in front of it is named after both men.
The physicist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod from 1980 to 1986 specifically to limit his contacts with foreigners. At that time the city was closed to foreign visitors to protect Soviet military research and production facilities.