American soldier, frontiersman and performer James “Wild Bill” Hickok was BOTD in 1837. Born and raised in Homer, Illinois, his family’s farm was part of the Underground Railroad network providing shelter to fugitive slaves. At 17, he left home to work as a canal boat pilot, moving to Kansas in 1856 where he joined the anti-slavery Free State Army of Jayhawkers. While serving as a bodyguard for  General James H. Lanes, he prevented an assault on an 11 year-old boy, who grew up to become his longtime friend Buffalo Bill Cody. In 1858, he became a rider for the Pony Express, distinguishing himself with acts of bravery, including a much-mythologised encounter with a wild bear. In 1861, he was involved in a shootout with Confederate soldiers that became known as the McCanles Massacre, and was tried and acquitted of murder. He eventually joined the Union Army, serving variously as a spy, a scout and a sharpshooter. In 1865, he was tried again for the murder of gunfighter David Tuft, during a shootout over a poker game. After the war, heavily fictionalised accounts of his adventures were serialised in Harper‘s and other magazines, helping solidify his legend as a hero of the American Civil War. After the war, he worked as a scout for General Custer, eventually settling in Kansas where he became the mayor of Hays City and later marshal of the town of Abeline. Dismissed from his post in 1871 following another shootout, he began appearing in Wild West Shows, joining Buffalo Bill’s The Scouts of the Prairie exhibition in Rochester, New York. Tall, handsome and photogenic, his performances made him wealthy but depressed, returning to the West in 1874. He married circus performer Agnes Thatcher in 1876, leaving her a month later to work in the goldfields of South Dakota. He travelled to Deadwood in a wagon train with a cortège including Martha “Calamity” Jane Cannery. (Cannery later claimed that she and Hickok were secretly married and had a child together, though this appears to be fiction). Hickok was murdered later that year during a saloon poker game. He was 39. One of the most enduring icons in American folk history, his life story was first portrayed in a 1923 silent film starring William S. Hart. He has since been played by Gary Cooper, Howard Keel, Sam Nelson, Guy Madison, Charles Bronson, Lloyd and Jeff Bridges, Luke Hemsworth, Josh Brolin and Keith Carradine. Despite his macho image, historians have attempted to argue that Hickok was secretly gay (evidenced by his “effeminate” long hair), though this has been dismissed by most of his biographers. His good looks and dexterity with guns have inspired a robust sub-genre of gay pornography and erotic fan fiction.