Short answers, pulled from the story.
The oldest known oil paintings are Buddhist murals created around 650 AD in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. They are located in rooms carved from the rock behind the famous Bamiyan Buddhas along the Silk Road.
American portrait painter John Goffe Rand invented the squeezable, collapsible metal tube in 1841. This made it practical to transport pre-mixed oil paint, enabling plein air painting for the first time.
The fat over lean rule states that each successive layer of oil paint must contain more oil than the layer beneath it. Applying layers in the wrong order causes the finished painting to crack and peel as it ages.
Most European Renaissance sources, including Vasari, falsely credited 15th-century northern European painters with the invention of oil paints, naming Jan van Eyck in particular. Oil-based painting had in fact been practiced in Asia centuries earlier.
Canvas became preferred because it was cheaper, lighter, easier to transport, and could support larger works than wood panels, which were expensive to prepare and prone to warping. Venice led the shift, as sail-canvas was readily available there.
Kolinsky sable is the finest quality brush used in oil painting, made from tail hairs of the Siberian weasel. Painters value it for its superfine point and its "snap," meaning it returns precisely to its original shape when lifted from the canvas.