Short answers, pulled from the story.
Trinity College Dublin was founded in 1592 through a royal charter issued by Queen Elizabeth I. It was built on the site of the former Augustinian Priory of All Hallows, which had been dissolved by King Henry VIII.
Adam Loftus, the Archbishop of Dublin, was Trinity College's first provost. He named the institution after Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had previously studied, and was provided with two initial Fellows, James Hamilton and James Fullerton.
The Book of Kells is an ancient illuminated manuscript and the most famous item in Trinity College Dublin's Library. It has been housed in the Old Library at Trinity since 1661. The Old Library, including the Long Room, receives over 900,000 visitors per year, making it Dublin's second-most visited tourist destination.
The Catholic Church lifted its ban on Catholics attending Trinity College in 1970. The ban had been in effect since 1871, when the Irish Catholic bishops prohibited Catholics from attending, with Archbishop John Charles McQuaid responsible for enforcing it from 1956 until the bishops rescinded it that year.
Notable Trinity alumni include writers Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, Bram Stoker, and Oliver Goldsmith; philosopher Edmund Burke; political leaders Éamon de Valera and Lord Carson; and Nobel Prize recipients. Ernest Walton, Ireland's first and only Nobel laureate in Physics, was also a Trinity scholar.
The College Historical Society, known as the Hist, was founded in 1770 and is recorded in the college calendar as its oldest student society. Speakers at the Hist have included Winston Churchill and Ted Kennedy.