Short answers, pulled from the story.
Seraing, then called Saran, first appears in records from 956, when a Carolingian farming domain on both sides of the Meuse river was donated to the abbey of Sint-Truiden. The land was owned by a man named Saran, from whom the city takes its name.
John Cockerill and his brother James founded John Cockerill and Cie in Seraing in 1817. They transformed steel production by replacing charcoal with coke and introducing blast furnaces, building a company that became the basis for Cockerill-Sambre.
The first ironworks in Seraing were founded in 1809. John Cockerill and his brother James subsequently revolutionized the operation by using blast furnaces and coke rather than traditional charcoal.
The greater Liège agglomeration, which includes Seraing along with Liège, Herstal, Saint-Nicolas, Ans, and Flémalle, has around 600,000 inhabitants.
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the Belgian filmmakers, were born in Seraing in 1951 and 1954 respectively.
Seraing is twinned with Douai in France, Rimini in Italy, and Châtel. These sister-city relationships reflect the city's postwar European connections.