Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ruhollah Khomeini was born on the 17th of May 1900 in the city of Khomeyn, in what is now Iran's Markazi province. His birth certificate gives this date, though his brother Mortaza recorded his birth as the 24th of September 1902.
Khomeini's theory was called Velayat-e Faqih, or Guardianship of the Jurist. It held that because Islamic law should govern society, the ruler should be the most knowledgeable Islamic jurist, a marja. He outlined this in lectures delivered in Najaf in early 1970, later published as Islamic Government.
Up to ten million people attended Khomeini's funeral, equal to about one fifth of Iran's population at the time. The event is considered the second-largest funeral in history. The chaotic scenes forced authorities to hold a second funeral five hours after the first, this time with a steel casket.
Khomeini issued the fatwa in early 1989 in response to Rushdie's 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, which Khomeini considered blasphemous against the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The fatwa called for the execution not only of Rushdie but of all those involved in the book's publication. The Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was stabbed to death in 1991.
Khomeini spent more than 14 years in exile. He was expelled to Turkey on the 4th of November 1964 and moved to the Iraqi city of Najaf in October 1965. He was expelled from Iraq in 1978 by Saddam Hussein and settled near Paris before returning to Iran on the 1st of February 1979.
The Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from September 1980 to August 1988, resulted in 450,000 to 950,000 Iranian casualties and cost an estimated US$300 billion. Khomeini refused an Iraqi ceasefire offer after Iran recovered its territory in early 1982, prolonging the war by six years. He described accepting the final UN-mediated truce as drinking "the cup of poison".