Short answers, pulled from the story.
Yangon is derived from the Burmese words yan and koun, meaning "enemies" and "run out of" respectively. The combined meaning is "End of Strife." The older English romanisation, Rangoon, is based on the Rakhine dialect.
Yangon was founded as Dagon by the Mon people in the early 11th century, roughly between 1028 and 1043. It became an important pilgrimage town starting in the 14th century during the Hanthawaddy kingdom.
Yangon served as Myanmar's capital until 2006, when the military government relocated administrative functions to the purpose-built city of Naypyidaw, 320 km to the north. The move was formally designated in November 2005.
Yangon has the largest number of colonial-era buildings in Southeast Asia because the British used the city as the capital of British Burma from 1852 and built it on a grid plan designed by army engineer Lieutenant Alexander Fraser. A 1996 heritage list and a 2012 fifty-year demolition moratorium have helped preserve the remaining structures.
The 8888 Uprising of 1988 resulted in the deaths of hundreds, and possibly thousands, of civilians in Yangon, where hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets to protest the military government. The uprising was one of several major protests that began in Yangon, alongside those in 1974, 2007, and 2021.
Cyclone Nargis struck Yangon in May 2008 as a Category 4 storm, destroying or damaging three-quarters of the city's industrial infrastructure. Losses were estimated at US$800 million, though the city had relatively few direct human casualties.