1. It is traditional eat oily foods (latkes, doughnuts, etc) and possibly cheese, for (separate) complicated apocryphal reasons. Latkes are fried potato cakes, typically made with (widely varying combinations of), potato, onion and egg, grated, mixed and fried[1].
2. It happens some time between late november and late december, lasting eight days.
3. It traditionally commemorates a revolt against attempts to change or suppress various Jewish practices (although many people point out the actual history isn't simple) but either way its polite not to try to police other people's religious practices especially at Hannukkah.
4. The most common spellings are "Hanukkah" and "Chanukah". Because it's originally transliterated from Hebrew, so there's no "right" spelling. Either is probably fine, although it's probably wise to pick one or the other. I asked Liv and she said that there could be many spellings of the original Hebrew and she didn't know off the top of her head which, and as far as she knew there were no lurking connotations of either of the common spellings, but there was probably a trans-atlantic difference. But I can't remember which.
5. A menorah is a seven-branched candlabrum which was used in the temple in Jerusalem and before, and often used as a symbol of Judaism and/or Israel. But as with many complicated rules, isn't actually really USED at the moment, since there isn't a temple any more. After the revolt was successful and the (second) temple was recaptured and rededicated, there is an apocryphal miracle where they didn't have enough oil to keep the menorah alight, but what they thought was one day's supply lasted a whole eight days until more could be brought in. Thus, Hannukkah is celebrated by lighting eight candles over eight days. These are often but not necessarily placed in a candlabrum which resembles a traditional menorah, which is either simply called a Menorah, or to avoid confusion, a Hanukiah.
6. The menorah should be placed where it can best be seen from the street (in order to make a _public_ celebration?). Usually people place them in windowsills, and if they live a long way from the street, just accept it's not perfect, but if you have a choice, it should be somewhere visible.
7. The candles should not be used for anything. In fact, the most likely thing you will use the candles for accidentally are (a) seeing and (b) lighting the other candles, so tradition dictates that you also light a nineth helper candle, and you can use that to light the others, and to see by. If you accidentally walk into a darkened room with a lit menorah, you should 8/9 shut your eyes so you're only using the light from the helper candle, not the others[2].
8. I don't know much about Hanukkah traditions for families, but apparently there's an exceptionally boring and pointless zero-sum form of gambling forced onto small children, where you give them some number of treats, and encourage them to bet them against a shared pot based on the result of a traditional spinner, and repeat until they figure out that the best way of winning gambling is to be the house, not the punter.
9. Bonus fact. Hanukkah doesn't have very much in common with Christmas. They both have little twinkly lights, a tradition of annoying party games, are more cultural than religious. But Passover is a lot more like the the Christmas "big family get-together with a big meal and little bits of history story" aspect. Hanukkah is perhaps more like shrove tuesday (theologically questionable oily foods), November the fifth (lots of solstice fire with a questionable link to historical political events) or July fourteenth (lots of fire and celebration, but tinged with rembrance of triumph over tyranny).
Footnotes
[1] Helpful tip! Don't grate the egg. Also, don't slavishly follow Jewish recipes described second hand on the internet by English atheists, and if you do, definitely don't admit in public that you tried to grate an egg, made a mess, and hurt your fingers.
[2] I made this bit up. Also, note that you light one candle the first night, two the second night, etc, so on the first night you can keep your eyes half-open, etc. And when I say you light eight candles over eight nights, I mean they light one more each night, but then leave them to burn down, lighting thirty-six plus eight helpers over the whole period.
[3] I considered claiming the facts were "top" or "interesting", but decided against it :)