Short answers, pulled from the story.
Yekaterinburg was officially founded on the 18th of November 1723, when the shops of a new iron-making plant on the Iset River carried out a test run of the bloomery for trip hammers. The city was established by statesman Vasily Tatishchev and engineer Georg Wilhelm de Gennin under a decree of Russian Emperor Peter the Great.
In 1924, following the founding of the Soviet Union, the city was renamed Sverdlovsk in honour of the Bolshevik leader Yakov Sverdlov. The city kept that name until the 23rd of September 1991, when it returned to its historical name of Yekaterinburg after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their children were murdered by Bolshevik guards in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg in the early hours of the 17th of July 1918. The house was demolished by order of Boris Yeltsin in 1977; the Cathedral of the Blood was later built on the site.
During World War II, Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk) served as the headquarters of the Ural Military District, through which more than 500 military units were formed. The Uralmash factory became the main production site for armoured vehicles, and whole factories relocated from Moscow and other cities under threat, many of which remained after the war. Part of the Hermitage Museum's collections were also evacuated there from Leningrad in July 1941, staying until October 1945.
The Shigir sculpture is the oldest known wooden sculpture in the world, held in the Shigir Collection at the United Museum of Writers of the Urals in Yekaterinburg. It was found near Nevyansk and is now estimated to be approximately 11,500 years old.
According to the 2021 Census, Yekaterinburg had a population of 1,544,376, making it the fourth most populous city in Russia. The urban agglomeration reaches up to 2.2 million residents. By the size of its economy, the city ranks third in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg.