Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened on the 15th of September 1830. It was the first locomotive-hauled railway to connect two major cities and the first to provide a scheduled passenger service.
William Huskisson was a former cabinet minister and Member of Parliament for Liverpool, born on the 11th of March 1770 at Birtsmorton Court in Worcestershire. He was struck by the locomotive Rocket at Parkside station during the opening day and died later that night, becoming the most prominent early railway fatality and bringing global attention to the new age of rail travel.
At Parkside station, 17 miles from Liverpool, Huskisson alighted to approach the Duke of Wellington's carriage. When the locomotive Rocket approached on the adjacent track, he was unable to get back into the carriage in time; the door swung open into Rocket's path and he fell onto the track. The wheel passed over his right leg and thigh, and he died later that night at the vicarage of the Rev. Thomas Blackburne in Eccles.
Northumbrian, hauling the injured Huskisson from Parkside toward Manchester, reached nearly 40 mph - briefly setting a new world speed record. During earlier test runs, Fanny Kemble described travelling at thirty-five miles an hour, which George Stephenson verified was faster than a snipe in flight.
Wellington was deeply unpopular in industrial north-west England for repeatedly blocking proposed political reforms. When his train arrived at Liverpool Road station in Manchester, a hostile crowd waved banners reading "No Corn Laws" and "Vote by Ballot" and pelted his carriage with vegetables. He refused to leave the train.
An estimated 69,000 people - roughly half the population of Liverpool at the time - attended Huskisson's funeral on Friday the 24th of September 1830. Around 3,000 colour-coded tickets were issued to control crowd numbers at the burial service at St James Cemetery.