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Benjamin Franklin Tilley

Benjamin Franklin Tilley (March 29, 1848 – March 18, 1907) was an officer in the United States Navy and the first acting governor of what is now American Samoa. He entered the Naval Academy at age 15 during the Civil War and graduated in 1866. In the wake of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, he participated as a lieutenant in the military's crackdown against workers. During the 1891 Chilean Civil War, Tilley and a small contingent of sailors and marines defended the American consulate in Santiago, Chile. Commanding the gunship USS Newport in the Spanish–American War, he captured two Spanish Navy ships. After the war Tilley was promoted to captain and became the acting governor of Tutuila and Manua, present-day American Samoa, where he set legal and administrative precedents for the new territory. Tilley's successor, Captain Uriel Sebree, praised his "great ability, kindness, tact and sound common sense". He was promoted to rear admiral after almost 41 years of naval service, but died within a month from pneumonia. (Full article...)

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A sketch of Santi Sergio e Bacco in the Roman Forum
A sketch of Santi Sergio e Bacco in the Roman Forum

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EgyptAir Airbus A320-200 involved in hijack
EgyptAir Airbus A320-200 involved in hijack

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March 29: Boganda Day in the Central African Republic; Martyrs' Day in Madagascar (1947)

Mariner 10
Mariner 10

Today's featured picture

Earthworm head

All earthworms have bodies composed of repeated segments called metameres separated from one another by circular membranes called septa. The metameres are very similar to one another, but in earthworms there are the following variations (among others): there are no nephridia in the first three segments; there are no nerve ganglia in the first two segments (though several nerves extend there from the third and fourth segments); the prostomium, which is not a complete segment, functions as a flap to close the mouth but is also highly flexible and is used by the worm as a prehensile body part to grasp and pull leaves and grass into its burrow. The large muscular pharynx sucks in the worm’s food which then passes between the animal’s hearts to be stored and moistened in the crop and then ground by fragments of ingested sand and stone in the gizzard before entering the rest of the intestine. The gizzard is considered the animal’s stomach. The nephridia are the only waste-filtering organs—there is no separate digestive gland or liver.

Diagram: K.D. Schroeder

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