Cora Agnes Benneson (1851–1919) was an American attorney, lecturer, and writer. She graduated from the University of Michigan, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1878, a Bachelor of Laws in 1880, and a Master of Arts in 1883, and was licensed to practice law in Illinois and Michigan. From 1883 to 1885, she traveled the world to learn about legal cultures and how they affected women. When she returned to the United States, she undertook a nationwide lecture tour to speak about her travels and observations. In 1886 Benneson briefly worked as an editor of West Publishing's law reports before taking up a history fellowship at Bryn Mawr College under then-professor Woodrow Wilson. In 1888 she moved to Boston, where she continued to write and lecture. She was licensed in Massachusetts in 1894 and opened a law practice. She was made a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1899 and elected secretary of its Social and Economic Science Section in 1900. ( Full article...)

In chemistry, an amino acid is a molecule containing both amine and carboxyl functional groups. In biochemistry, this term refers to alpha-amino acids with the general formula H₂NCHRCOOH, where R is an organic substituent. ^[1] In the alpha amino acids, the amino and carboxylate groups are attached to the same carbon, which is called the α–carbon. The various alpha amino acids differ in which side chain (R group) is attached to their alpha carbon. They can vary in size from just a hydrogen atom in glycine through a methyl group in alanine to a large heterocyclic group in tryptophan.

Beyond the amino acids that are found in all forms of life, many non-natural amino acids have vital roles in technology and industry. For example, the chelating agents EDTA and nitrilotriacetic acid are alpha amino acids that are important in the chemical industry. ( more...)

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Nathan Steuer

• ... that Magic: The Gathering world champion Nathan Steuer (pictured) started tournament-level play as a pre-teen, saying that the "13 and up" label on Magic packaging was "just recommended"?
• ... that in 1919 Vladimir Zitta, Evgenia Semenovskaya, Vladimir Bezel and G. N. Maksimov were expelled from the Party of Revolutionary Communism for having advocated unity with other populist sectors?
• ... that the satellite TRUTHS is planned to enable the precise calibration of Earth observation data from other satellites?
• ... that ice hockey coach Ryan Warsofsky was the youngest active head coach in the ECHL, then was the youngest in the AHL, and now is the youngest in the NHL?
• ... that Pure Japanese was released under this English title in its native Japan?
• ... that Charlemagne owned an elephant that he received as a gift from the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid?
• ... that one critic interpreted a SZA song as being about her fears about the growing influence of AI in the music industry?
• ... that Kho Ping Hoo, despite writing numerous stories based on wuxia, could not read Chinese?

July 17: Constitution Day in South Korea ( 1948); World Emoji Day

Russian imperial family, 1913

• 1850 – William Cranch Bond and John Adams Whipple took a daguerreotype of Vega, the first astrophotograph of a star other than the Sun.
• 1862 – The garrotting and robbery of James Pilkington, a British member of Parliament, led to a moral panic in London.
• 1918 – Russian Revolution: Tsar Nicholas II and his family (pictured) were murdered by Bolsheviks at Yekaterinburg.
• 1944 – Laden with munitions for World War II, two ships exploded at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California, killing 320 people and injuring more than 400 others.
• 2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

Bispira volutacornis, sometimes known as the twin fan worm or spiral fan worm, is a type of tube worm found in the shallow sublittoral zone of the eastern Atlantic Ocean. It grows in crevices and in stony areas and prefers areas rich in sediment but with low levels of illumination. It has a parchment-like tube with a mucoid outer layer that is often coated with mud or silt. The tube is usually concealed in a crevice and the worm can retract into the tube when disturbed. It feeds on plankton which it captures with its plumes. It also uses the plumes to gather sediment with which to expand the tube. This B. volutavornis worm was photographed in Arrábida Natural Park, Portugal.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso