60 Fun Facts About Forensic Science

The word "forensic" comes from a Latin word meaning "of" what?

Roman trials and hearings were held in the forum, which is also why "forensics" can mean public debate.

In what year was Xi Yuan Lu, the first written account of forensic medicine, written?

Author Song Ci served as a judge in the Song dynasty's high courts and personally examined crime scenes.

In Song Ci's famous case, every villager laid out his blade. What gave the killer away?

The investigator had already worked out the weapon type by testing blades on an animal carcass.

What did suspects in ancient India have to spit out as a crude lie-detection test?

The idea was that a nervous liar produces less saliva, so more of the grains would stick in the mouth.

John Toms was convicted of murder in 1784 after a pistol wad matched what item in his pocket?

It is one of the earliest recorded uses of physical matching evidence in an English trial.

Which Swedish chemist devised a method for detecting arsenic in corpses in 1773?

German chemist Valentin Ross extended the work in 1806 to detect the poison in a victim's stomach wall.

James Marsh's famous arsenic test, first described in 1836, produced the metal as what kind of deposit?

It could detect as little as one-fiftieth of a milligram, after an earlier test of his had crumbled in front of a jury.

Who is regarded as the father of modern toxicology?

Born in Minorca, he became royal physician to Louis XVIII and later dean of the Paris faculty of medicine.

Whose 1835 bullet comparison at Scotland Yard is a landmark of forensic ballistics?

Modern examiners compare the marks a barrel and firing pin leave on bullets and casings.

Alphonse Bertillon's identification system was based on what?

His system was overtaken by fingerprinting, but his mug shot and standardised crime-scene photography survive.

Bertillon's flawed handwriting evidence helped wrongly convict which famous defendant?

He standardised the mug shot in 1888, notably with his file on anarchists.

Sir William Herschel began using thumbprints on documents in 1858 while working where?

He later registered pensioners' prints so relatives could not keep collecting after a death.

Henry Faulds, who published the first paper on fingerprint identification in 1880, was a surgeon in which city?

His letter to Charles Darwin was passed on to Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, who spent ten years on the subject.

Francis Galton estimated the chance of two people sharing the same fingerprints at about one in how many?

He set out the statistics in his book Finger Prints and pushed for police use.

The world's first fingerprint bureau was set up in 1892 in which country?

Its founder Juan Vucetich helped solve the Francisca Rojas case that same year via a bloody thumb mark on a door.

The Henry Classification System for fingerprints was actually co-devised by two experts in which city?

Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose did the primary work; the system was named for their supervisor Edward Henry.

Fingerprints that are invisible to the naked eye and need chemical or powder development are called what?

Prints pressed into soft soap, cement or plaster are called plastic prints.

Which reagent used to develop fingerprints works by reacting with amino acids in sweat?

Vacuum metal deposition with gold and zinc can detect fat layers just one molecule thick.

Do identical twins have identical fingerprints?

Papillary ridge patterns are unique to each individual and do not change over time.

What did researchers nickname adermatoglyphia, the condition of having no fingerprints?

A 2011 study tied it to improper expression of the protein SMARCAD1.

Paul Uhlenhuth's 1901 precipitin test allowed investigators to distinguish what?

It relied on the discovery that each species' blood carries characteristic proteins.

Luminol reveals traces of blood by reacting with what?

The glow lasts only about 30 seconds and its brightness does not indicate how much blood is present.

What colour does luminol glow when it reacts at a crime scene?

The reaction is chemiluminescence, so it must be viewed in a darkened room.

Whose 1893 Handbook for Coroners is generally regarded as the birth of criminalistics?

He went on to found the Institute of Criminalistics at the University of Graz in 1912.

The world's first school of forensic science, founded in 1909, is at which university?

Archibald Reiss founded the Institut de police scientifique there.

Edmond Locard is remembered for the principle that every contact leaves what?

He set up what may have been the first crime lab in 1910 in space lent by the Lyon police.

Locard's first crime laboratory in Lyon began in 1910 with two assistants and what premises?

He had to persuade the Lyon police department to give him the space.

The Bertillon System identified people by measuring how many parts of the body?

In 1884 alone, over 240 repeat offenders were caught with it.

Frances Glessner Lee's Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death are what?

Eighteen of the twenty are still used to train homicide investigators.

In 1943 Frances Glessner Lee became the first US woman appointed to what New Hampshire post?

Her wealth came from International Harvester, and Erle Stanley Gardner dedicated novels to her.

Frances Glessner Lee endowed the first US department of legal medicine in 1931 at which university?

Her friend George Burgess Magrath, a Boston medical examiner, inspired her interest in death investigation.

Who discovered DNA fingerprinting after a "eureka moment" looking at an X-ray film on 10 September 1984?

The image unexpectedly showed differences between members of his technician's family.

The first real-world use of DNA fingerprinting in 1985 resolved what kind of case?

It confirmed a British boy was closely related to his family, who were originally from Ghana.

Colin Pitchfork, the first person convicted of murder using DNA profiling, killed two girls in which county?

He was arrested in September 1987 and jailed for life in January 1988.

How did Colin Pitchfork initially evade the mass DNA screening of local men?

Ian Kelly took the test with a fake passport for £200 and was later overheard boasting in a pub.

Roughly how many local men gave blood samples in the Pitchfork DNA manhunt?

Richard Buckland, who had confessed to one murder, became the first person exonerated by DNA.

Modern DNA profiling relies mainly on which highly variable repeating sequences?

Only about 0.1% of human DNA differs between people, but that is enough to tell anyone apart except identical twins.

Which technique used to amplify tiny DNA samples was developed by Kary Mullis in 1983?

Its first step heats the sample to 95 °C so the two strands separate.

Before 2017, the FBI's CODIS database required offender profiles to include how many core loci?

Seven more were added from January 2017.

In what year did Congress pass the DNA Identification Act, authorising the FBI's national DNA database?

By September 2020 the national index held more than 14 million offender profiles.

In which country did familial DNA searching first lead to a conviction, in 2003?

The match came through the killer's nephew, who had not even been born at the time of the 1988 murder.

The Body Farm, the first facility for studying human decomposition, belongs to which state's university?

Anthropologist William M. Bass conceived it in 1971 after being asked to date a decomposed cow.

Who invented the polygraph in 1921?

He was both a Berkeley medical student and a Berkeley police officer at the time.

Polygraph pioneer William Moulton Marston is better known for creating which comic hero?

His wife Elizabeth reportedly noticed her blood pressure climbed when she got angry, inspiring the device.

The first modern study of bloodstains, published in 1895, was based on experiments on which animals?

Eduard Piotrowski of the University of Kraków studied blunt head trauma.

Which state's supreme court first accepted expert bloodstain testimony, from Paul L. Kirk, in 1957?

Courts in Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio and California had rejected such testimony between 1880 and 1957.

A 2009 National Academy of Sciences report called which forensic field's uncertainties 'enormous'?

It called practitioners' opinions "more subjective than scientific".

Bite-mark evidence helped convict which serial killer of the Chi Omega sorority murders?

Odontologists Richard Souviron and Lowell Levine matched the wounds to castings of his teeth.

Bite marks were first used as evidence in what became the United States during which proceedings?

Rev. George Burroughs was accused of biting his victims in 1692.

Who first applied forensic entomology to a case, estimating time since death in an 1855 report?

He worked out a general insect life cycle to estimate the post-mortem interval.

In 1668 Francesco Redi used rotting meat to disprove which idea about maggots?

Meat kept from the air produced no maggots, while exposed meat did.

The earliest surviving offender profile was written in 1888 by surgeon Thomas Bond about which killer?

Over 2,000 people were interviewed and 80 detained in that investigation.

The American Academy of Forensic Sciences was founded in what year?

It publishes the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

In an 1816 Warwick murder case, a farm labourer's breeches matched an impression left in damp earth of what?

Scattered wheat grains and chaff near the pool pointed to a man who had been threshing nearby, an early example of trace evidence.

Which German chemist extended Scheele's work in 1806 by detecting arsenic in the walls of a victim's stomach?

Toxicology grew from such work into the branch of forensic chemistry that identifies drugs and poisons in biological samples.

Henry Faulds sent his fingerprint method to which famous naturalist, who passed it on to Francis Galton?

Too old and ill to pursue it, Darwin handed the idea to his cousin Galton, who spent ten years studying fingerprints and wrote the book Finger Prints.

Who founded the Institut de police scientifique at Lausanne, the world's first forensic science school?

Locard, the 'Sherlock Holmes of France', went on to open what may have been the first crime laboratory in Lyon the following year.

By what nickname was Edmond Locard known?

He was taught by Alexandre Lacassagne, who produced autopsy standards based on actual forensic cases.

Which 2009 US Supreme Court case ruled crime lab reports can't be used at trial unless the analyst testifies?

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Scalia said forensic evidence 'is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation'.

Per the Innocence Project and US DOJ, forensic science errors contributed to roughly what share of wrongful convictions?

A National Academy of Sciences report noted many traditional forensic disciplines had never been empirically validated.