Short answers, pulled from the story.
The island of Taiwan lies between the Yangtze Plate to the west and north, the Okinawa Plate on the north-east, and the Philippine Mobile Belt on the east and south. Collision of these forerunners created terranes that were uplifted when a portion of the Eurasian Plate detached beneath remnants of the Philippine Sea Plate.
A 7.3 magnitude quake known as the 921 earthquake occurred on the 21st of September 1999 and killed more than 2,400 people. The seismic hazard map by the USGS rates nine-tenths of the island at the most hazardous rating due to major faults corresponding to suture zones.
Human remains dated 20,000 to 30,000 years ago suggest early populations were Australo-Papuan people similar to Negrito groups in the Philippines. These groups transitioned from hunter-gatherers to intensive fishing before farmers of the Dapenkeng culture settled around 6,000 years ago.
By the 1660s, some 30,000 to 50,000 Chinese were living on the island after the Dutch East India Company encouraged immigration to work lands under their control. This population grew significantly from an initial transient group numbering close to 1,500 when the Dutch arrived in 1624.
Martial law was lifted on the main island of Taiwan on the 15th of July 1987 following its declaration in May 1949. Lee Teng-hui later became the first president born in Taiwan and the first directly elected in 1996 after Chiang Ching-kuo died in 1988.