not brian, but ill give it a go. Maxwell had a set of equations whose solutions give light waves an absolute speed, and looed like exact universal laws of physics. einstein proposed special relativity as a framework where maxwells equations would work as would newtons laws (almost) work, before this an invisible all encompassing medium through which light could travel called the "either" was proposed but could not be verified. As for the second aspect of your question it is not possible to accelerate a body or particle with mass to or past the speed of light as the energy needed to accelerate it will grow super-quadratically when the speed is close to c, and is ∞ when it is c. The closer an object is to the speed of light, the closer it is to having infinite relativistic mass