Who was the real Robinson Crusoe?

Daniel Defoe’s fictional hero Robinson Crusoe is well known today. But not so well known is the real castaway, a Scotsman named Alexander Selkirk, who chose to be left on Juan Fernandez, an island named after Spaniard who had discovered it a hundred years earlier. After living there alone for over four years, Slekirk was found and rescued by a British ship and returned home to Britain, where his adventures inspired Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe.