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Julius Caesar is assassinated. Physician performed an autopsy, determined that out of the 23 wounds found on the body , only one of them was fatal.
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Germanic and slavic societies made law that medical experts must be the ones to determine cause of death in crimes.
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Fingerprints first used to determine identity. Arabic merchants would take a debtor's fingerprint and attach it to the bill.
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The first legally ordered autopsies were performed from 1302 in Bologna. Da Varignana examined the bodies of people who had died in suspicious circumstances to determine the cause of death.
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William Nichol invented the polarizing light microscope
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In 1832 chemistry was first used as evidence in a case of arsenic poisoning by sampling the lining of a victims stomach.The new science of toxicology was born and arsenic lost its appeal as the perfect murder weapon
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San Francisco becomes the first city in the united states to use photos in murder court
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Galton's system identified the following patterns: plain arch, tented arch, simple loop, central pocket loop, double loop, lateral pocket loop, plain whorl, and accidental.
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Human ABO blood types were discovered in 1900 and were soon used to determine whether blood present at a crime scene matched a suspect or victim.
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Victor Balthazard and Marcelle Lambert publish first study on hair, including microscopic studies from most animals . First legal case ever involving hair also took place following this study.
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FBI establishes its own crime laboratory, now one of the foremost crime labs in the world. This same year , a legal Medicine at Harvard was established.
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Prototype polygraph, which was invented by John Larson in 1921, developed for use in police stations.
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Britains Forensic Science service develops online footwear coding and detection system. This helps police identify footwear marks quickly.