Short answers, pulled from the story.
Alfred Clark executed the first motion picture special effect in 1895 by filming a reenactment of the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots. This process required precise timing and a dummy to replace the actor at the exact moment the executioner swung the axe.
Georges Méliès accidentally discovered the stop trick while filming a street scene in Paris when his camera jammed during production. This accidental discovery inspired him to develop a series of more than 500 short films between 1896 and 1913.
Special effects often refer to mechanical and optical effects created during live-action shooting or in-camera. Visual effects refer to digital post-production techniques that emerged with the development of digital filmmaking.
Motion capture records the movement of objects or people by using sensor-embedded suits to track actions of human actors. This information is then used to animate digital character models in 2-D or 3-D computer animation.
A matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that is not present at the filming location. This technique creates vast landscapes, futuristic cities, and historical settings that would be too costly or impractical to build physically.
Polish-American animator Max Fleischer developed the rotoscope device originally used to project photographed live-action movie images onto a glass panel for tracing. This equipment was eventually replaced by computers, but the process remains called rotoscoping.