Short answers, pulled from the story.
The General Court of the Colony of Connecticut passed An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School on the 9th of October 1701. James Pierpont led the group known as The Founders who met in Branford to donate books and form the school's library.
Cotton Mather contacted Elihu Yale to ask for money to construct a new building after he made a fortune in Madras while working for the East India Company. He donated nine bales of goods sold for more than £560 which prompted the school to change its name to Yale College in 1718.
Connecticut Hall built in 1750 remains the oldest structure on campus. Edward S. Harkness financed Collegiate Gothic buildings constructed between 1917 and 1931 that feature faux-aged walls splashed with acid and broken leaded glass windows.
Amy Solomon became the first woman to register as an undergraduate student but the class of 1973 marked the first year women started from freshman year. All undergraduate women were housed in Vanderbilt Hall during that decade before half of all undergraduates became women.
Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush graduated from the institution after the Vietnam War ended. Five U.S. presidents have attended the university alongside ten Founding Fathers and nineteen Supreme Court justices.