American statesman Alexander Hamilton was BOTD in 1755 or 1757. Born in the (then-British controlled) West Indies as the illegitimate son of a trader. Orphaned as a child, he was adopted by wealthy merchant, and sent to New York to be educated. He served as an artillery officer in the American Revolutionary War, serving as an aide to George Washington and helping secure a victory against the British at the Siege of Yorktown. After the war, Hamilton served in the Congress of the Federation, resigning to practice law and establish the Bank of New York. He played a major part in the ratification of the American Constitution, co-writing the Federalist Papers, a series of essays that explained and interpreted the proposed roles of government. Appointed to Washington’s first Cabinet, he led the Department of the Treasury, establishing the first Bank of the United States and opposing the international slave trade. He married Elizabeth Schuyler in 1780 with whom he had eight children. His friendship with Washington’s aide-de-camp John Laurens has been extensively debated by historians and biographers; their passionate, erotically charged correspondence has been argued as possible evidence of a sexual relationship. Hamilton was shot in a duel in 1804 by his political rival Aaron Burr, dying of his injuries, aged 47 or 49. He made an unlikely return to popular consciousness in 2015 as the star of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s phenomenally successful hip-hop musical.