Short answers, pulled from the story.
David Ben-Gurion was born on the 16th of October 1886 in Płońsk, a town that was then part of Congress Poland under the Russian Empire. He was born David Grün and adopted the name Ben-Gurion in 1910, choosing it after the historic Joseph ben Gurion.
Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel on the 14th of May 1948, in a ceremony in Tel Aviv held a few hours before the British Mandate officially terminated. He was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which he had helped to write.
Ben-Gurion served as prime minister of Israel twice. His first tenure began after the election of the 14th of February 1949 and ran until 1954. He returned to government in 1955 and served until he stepped down on the 16th of June 1963.
The Altalena Affair occurred in 1948 when a ship arrived carrying arms purchased by the Irgun. Ben-Gurion insisted all weapons be handed over to the newly formed Israel Defense Forces, and when fighting broke out on the Tel Aviv beach he ordered the ship shelled. Sixteen Irgun fighters and three IDF soldiers were killed.
After stepping down in June 1963, Ben-Gurion broke with Mapai in 1965 and formed the Rafi party, then formed yet another party, the National List, which won four seats in the 1969 election. He retired from politics entirely in 1970 and moved permanently to kibbutz Sde Boker, where he worked on an eleven-volume history of Israel's early years until his death on the 1st of December 1973.
Ben-Gurion is buried alongside his wife Paula in the Ben-Gurion Tomb National Park at Midreshet Ben-Gurion, near kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev. Ben-Gurion International Airport, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheva, and an Israeli modification of the British Centurion tank all bear his name.