Short answers, pulled from the story.
Pliny the Elder died on the 25th of August, AD 79, near Stabiae during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. He had crossed the Gulf of Naples by galley to rescue stranded friends and was overcome, likely by toxic volcanic gases, though Jacob Bigelow argued in 1859 that apoplexy or heart disease was the more probable cause.
Natural History is a thirty-seven-volume encyclopedia covering botany, zoology, astronomy, geology, and mineralogy, dedicated to the future emperor Titus and released around AD 77. It is the largest single work to survive from the Roman Empire and became the editorial model for all later encyclopedias. It is also virtually the only surviving text describing the work of Roman artists of the period.
Pliny the Elder was born at Como, in the region of old Gallia Transpadana, in AD 23 or 24. A statue of him on the facade of the Como Cathedral commemorates him as a native son.
Pliny produced seven works spanning 102 volumes in total, of which only Natural History survives. Lost works include the twenty-volume Bella Germaniae on the wars between Rome and the Germani, a two-volume biography of Pomponius Secundus, a six-volume rhetoric manual titled Studiosus, and eight books of Dubii sermonis on doubtful phraseology.
Pliny entered the army around AD 46 and rose through three ranks reconstructed by the scholar Ronald Syme: praefectus cohortis under Corbulo in Germania Inferior, military tribune under Pomponius Secundus in Germania Superior, and praefectus alae commanding a cavalry battalion of about 480 men. He later served as commander of the imperial fleet at Misenum under Vespasian.
Pliny had one servant read source texts aloud while another transcribed his dictated extracts, a method he used even while bathing. His extract collection eventually reached about 160 volumes. Larcius Licinius, the Praetorian legate of Hispania Tarraconensis, offered 400,000 sesterces for them, but Pliny declined and bequeathed the volumes to his nephew.