Short answers, pulled from the story.
Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash created the first known non-fungible token named Quantum during a live presentation at the New Museum in New York City. They registered the video on the Namecoin blockchain and sold it to Dash for four dollars.
CryptoKitties launched in November 2017 as a widely acclaimed blockchain game on Ethereum that pioneered the ERC-721 standard. The game used an early version of this standard that differed from the formally published version released in 2028.
Artist Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, sold Everydays: The First 5000 Days at Christie's for $69 million. This transaction became the first instance of a legacy arthouse dealing in NFTs.
A May 2022 estimate showed sales had dropped by over 90% compared to 2021 levels according to reports from the Wall Street Journal. Active wallets fell 88% from November 2021 while daily sales declined 92% from September 2021.
Ethereum switched from proof of work to proof of stake in 2022 which cut energy usage by 99.99 percent according to reports. Proof-of-work protocols previously consumed large amounts of electricity to regulate and verify transactions before this change.