What's the history of Ubuntu?

What is the history of Ubuntu? How did Ubuntu originate? Who were the people involved?

From About Ubuntu on ubuntu.com:

Where did it all begin?

Linux was already established as an enterprise server platform in 2004. But free software was still not a part of everyday life for most computer users. That's why Mark Shuttleworth gathered a small team of developers from one of the most established Linux projects – Debian - and set out to create an easy-to-use Linux desktop: Ubuntu.

The vision for Ubuntu is part social and part economic: free software, available free of charge to everybody on the same terms, and funded through a portfolio of services provided by Canonical.

To find out who was involved it is best to checkout the relevant Ubuntu mailing lists. An example would be ubuntu-devel from 2004 ordered by users.