There is no specific date assigned to the events of the Star Wars movies, and there will likely never be. That famous introductory line is supposed to inform audiences that the following two-hours-and-change are pure escaptist fantasy, and that the rules and preconceptions of the dreary real world do not apply. Asking how long "a long time ago" is akin to asking "once upon WHAT time?" at the start of a fairy tale.
Despite what looks like a white uniform, that severe-looking silver-haired man was not a Grand Admiral. At a convention, bestselling author (and creator of the first Grand Admiral) Timothy Zahn once quipped that he hoped to see that Imperial enhanced with digitally rendered gold epaulettes in a hoped-for special edition. As revealed in the first Star Wars Customizable Card Game, that guy was Colonel Wullf Yularen, a member of the Imperial Security Bureau.
That droid-gulping horror was a dragonsnake, a large omnivorous predator that lurks beneath the muddy waters of Dagobah. Because of its tendency to stay mostly submerged, it is often mistaken for a swamp slug. Only the oily, black hide of its knobby-spined back was visible in the film--because that was the extent of the creature's fabrication. Without the rest of its impressive form built, the practical model used on set resembled a big bloated leech. It was controlled by underwater divers during the shoot, and was simply referred ot as the "swamp creature."
No one knows. The slug the Falcon encounters is supposed to be a wonder. Its inexplicable off-the-charts size was meant to evoke salty tales of unimaginably huge sharks, whales, or other fishes lurking off the edge of the map in the seafaring days. Space slugs ordinarily split my mitosis when they reach their upper size. Occasionally, through freak mutation, they don't and just keep growing. The Expanded Universe has played up on the rarity of truly colossal slugs. The one the Falcon encounters is estimated to be over 800 meters long.
In the finished film, you'll notice the Red Squadron X-wings have red markings while the Gold Squadron Y-wings have gold markings. If the X-wings had remained Blue Squadron as originally written, it would have been impossible at the time to decorate the starfighters with the appropriate colors. The limitations of optical compositing in the mid-1970s meant that no model or subject photographed in front of bluescreen could have any blue on it. Otherwise, those blue areas would appear transparent and show the background plate behind the foreground element. This is why in some shots of the original trilogy R2-D2 has black panels instead of blue when in space. Nowadays, digital compositing allows for a wider range of blues to be photographed against bluescreen, and also allows for greenscreen use that preserves all the blue shades intact.
Those are your ears playing tricks on you. While some Ewokese words find their origins in terrestrial tongues, you're more likely to run across an out-of-context Tibetan word or two than an English proclamation regarding Threepio's wisdom. Other fans swear they hear the next Ewok say "more than I am short," but again, it's just from picking up unintended patterns.
Given that he's nine years old in The Phantom Menace and freshly turned 20 in Attack of the Clones, Anakin's age is about 45 years old. We can't get too exact, because we don't know exactly where in the calendar year are Anakin's birthday and the day of his death. You're right; he does look like hell when Luke removes his mask. But considering what Anakin's in for in Episode III, it's a wonder he looks even that good.
It was three long years for fans to wait between the 1980 release of The Empire Strikes Back and the 1983 release of Jedi, but the characters in the universe didn't have to wait as long. Current timelines place the events of Return of the Jedi during year four after the Battle of Yavin. Exactly how much time transpires between the Falcon's departure from the medical frigate to Vader's arrival aboard the second Death Star has yet to be revealed. The Return of the Jedi novelization states that Han spent "six of this desert planet's months" in carbon-freeze, but no source has ever established how long a month is on Tatooine.
Since the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon wasn't fully functionable, Han had to coax his beloved freighter from the Anoat system to Bespin at a dreadfully slow speed. Boba Fett spotted them making their departure. The crafty bounty hunter figured that since the Falcon wasn't on the other side of the galaxy by now, its hyperdrive must have been faulty. Armed with that supposition, he was able to calculate their likely destination: Bespin. Slave I had no engine problem, so Fett was able to make the short jump to Bespin, case the planet, inform Vader, await the Dark Lord's arrival, and plan his trap with time to spare.
Leia's a tough nut to crack. You saw how she took the annihilation of her planet standing up. The style of the original trilogy is meant to mimic the serials of old, where characters didn't waste too much screen time blubbering hysterically about the tragedies that befall them. It's that kind of breeziness that makes these films of-putting to the uninitiated, but we Star Wars fans know better. Furthermore, much of Leia's stability comes from the fact that, at the time, she has a real image of her father. It's Bail Organa. Sure, she realizes the truth that Luke has told her, but the reality of Bail Organa raising her is impossible for her to shake. Luke had no such reality to cling to. He had fanciful notions of his father either being a navigator on a spice freighter, or a Jedi friend to Obi-Wan. Vader's revelation hit him much harder. I recommend you pick up The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers and Tatooine Ghost by Troy Denning. Together, these two books examine Leia's coming ot terms with her heritage. It wasn't an easy path. She had to understand and forgive her biological father before she could ever feel comfortable embracing her Jedi roots and raising children of her own.