Short answers, pulled from the story.
Qin Shi Huang was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of China. By 221 BC he had conquered all the other warring states and unified China, then invented the title huangdi, emperor, which monarchs would use for the next two millennia.
Qin Shi Huang was born in February 259 BC in Handan, the capital of Zhao, and died on the 12th of July 210 BC at the age of 49. He died at the palace in Shaqiu prefecture during his fifth tour of eastern China.
Beginning in 213 BC, at Li Si's instigation, Qin Shi Huang ordered most books burned to stop scholars comparing his reign with the past, sparing works on astrology, agriculture, medicine, divination, and Qin history. The later Shiji says some 460 scholars were buried alive, though recent research suggests the victims were more likely alchemists who had deceived him.
The Terracotta Army is a force of around 6,000 life-sized clay statues built to guard Qin Shi Huang in the afterlife from evil spirits. It was discovered by farmers digging wells on the 29th of March 1974, and includes chariots and 40,000 real bronze weapons.
Qin Shi Huang survived multiple assassination attempts. Jing Ke struck in 227 BC with a dagger hidden in a map, the blind musician Gao Jianli swung a lead-weighted instrument, and in 218 BC a strongman hired by Zhang Liang hurled a 120 jin metal cone at the wrong carriage.
Qin Shi Huang ordered new walls connecting northern fortifications as a precursor to the Great Wall of China, the 34 kilometre Lingqu Canal begun in 214 BC, and a vast mausoleum at the foot of Mount Li. He also cast Twelve Metal Colossi from confiscated bronze weapons, each said to stand about 11.5 meters tall.
Qin Shi Huang was long portrayed as a brutal Legalist tyrant, a view shaped largely by scathing Han dynasty assessments such as Jia Yi's essay blaming a ruler who lacked humaneness and rightness. Since the mid-20th century scholars have questioned this, and sinologist Michael Loewe noted his reign shaped all of China's later history through to 1911.