Short answers, pulled from the story.
Theodor Boveri and Valentin Haecker coined the term stem cell in the late 19th century. Ernest McCulloch and James Till conducted experiments at the University of Toronto in the early 1960s that established core properties like self-renewal and potency.
Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent and can develop into more than 200 different cell types from three germ layers. Adult stem cells include hematopoietic stem cells that replenish blood and immune cells, as well as mesenchymal stem cells that maintain bone, cartilage, muscle, and fat tissues.
Shinya Yamanaka's team in Kyoto converted fibroblasts into pluripotent stem cells by modifying four genes on the 4th of November 2006. This discovery marked the origin of induced pluripotent stem cells which share properties with embryonic stem cells but have closed chromatin.
There were 486 approved lines as of January 2022 according to National Institutes of Health guidelines effective the 7th of July 2009. Executive Order 13505 established federal funding criteria for these approved human embryonic stem-cell lines.
The first human trial approved by the US Food and Drug Administration began on the 13th of October 2010 in Atlanta for spinal cord injury research. Geron Corporation discontinued further development of its stem cell programs on the 14th of November 2011.