People Who Went To Penn: Nicholas Biddle

This week's People Who Went To Penn is a l'il bit obscure and a whole lot of fun. Nicholas Biddle was a banker and diplomat in the early 19th century whose father was BFFs with Ben Franklin since the Revolution. As a financier with Penn connections from Daddy, he was basically your typical Quaker.

Even so, Biddle went pretty hard with the overachiever thing as he enrolled at Penn at age TEN. Because who doesn't want a B.A. for their first double digits birthday? When Biddle became a SWUG at the ripe age of 14, though, the university denied him a degree because he was so young. Biddle basically said "forget you" to Penn and peaced out to Princeton (Ed. Note: Way to kick us when we're down), where he graduated as his class valedictorian at 15.

Despite an unsuccessful attempt to get a degree at Penn, Biddle became relevant enough to make it into your AP US History book as the second President of the Bank of the United States. As the first effective central bank in the country, it was a tad controversial and Andrew Jackson was having none of it. Jackson waged a "Bank War" on Biddle and his beloved treasury, withdrawing all federal money from the Bank in 1833 (this is the part from your history class about federalism and sh!t). However, Biddle and the Bank held on until it collapsed in 1841 and a heartbroken Biddle died soon after in 1844.

And on top of all of that, the whole Biddle family was hella famous and the Biddle Law Library is named after one of the other guys.