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In 1247 the first textbook on forensic medicine was published in China

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In 1247 the first textbook on forensic medicine was published in China

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-Washing Away of Wrongs
-Forensic Entomology

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The Mongol empire was founded by Genghis Khan

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The Mongol empire was founded by Genghis Khan

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Writes 1st scientific paper on detecting arsenic

Father of Toxicology- detection of poisons in body fluids, tissue, or organs.

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The 1887 coroners act ensured that an integral part of the coroners’ role was to determine the circumstances and the medical causes of sudden, violent and unnatural deaths.

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The 1887 coroners act ensured that an integral part of the coroners’ role was to determine the circumstances and the medical causes of sudden, violent and unnatural deaths.

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Legislation is available in different versions:

Latest Available (revised): The latest available updated version of the legislation incorporating changes made by subsequent legislation and applied by our editorial team. Changes we have not yet applied to the text, can be found in the 'Changes to Legislation' area.

Original (As Enacted or Made): The original version of the legislation as it stood when it was enacted or made. No changes have been applied to the text.

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Latest Available (revised): The latest available updated version of the legislation incorporating changes made by subsequent legislation and applied by our editorial team. Changes we have not yet applied to the text, can be found in the 'Changes to Legislation' area.

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The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor from France, in July 1885.

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The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor from France, in July 1885.

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French Anthropologist

Introduced the Bertillon System (aka Anthropometry) in 1879

Used various measurements of  the body to identify people by their physical appearance

Replaced by Fingerprinting after the Will West case in 1903

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French doctor/criminologist

Opened the very first crime laboratory in France in 1910

Locard’s Exchange Principle

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1916-2002

American chemist

Microscopy expert

Examined The Shroud of Turin and the Vinland ma

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On July 1, 1923, Officer Rex Welsh of the Los Angeles Police Department was assigned to be the department's first criminalist and tasked with setting up a scientific laboratory to support criminal investigations. This was part of Chief August Vollmer's efforts to modernize and bring innovation into the department. The new assignment introduced the first public-funded crime lab in the United States, preceding the FBI's version by nine years. Welsh had some college training in science and an interest in applying scientific analysis to police investigations. As the new Scientific Investigation Division, he set up a tiny lab in the old Central Police Station, located at First and Hill streets, starting with an old microscope, some chemicals and glassware.

Six years later, the LAPD added a second staff member to the lab with the hiring of Ray Pinker, a civilian with a bachelor's degree in pharmacology from USC. Pinker became the nation's first civilian police forensics scientist. He assumed the technical work of the lab while Welsh focused on narcotics analysis. The lab gained greater scientific credibility under Pinker's scientific expertise and methodology and went on to become a model for other cities. Pinker also pioneered the use of paraffin tests and gamma rays for determining use of a firearm, breathalyzers, lie detectors, color and 3-D crime scene photography.

Through the 1930s, Pinker and the officer assigned to the lab (Officer Leland Jones replaced Welsh after Welsh was tragically killed in a boating accident in 1934) were LAPD's entire forensics team of two, performing lab analysis, responding to crime scenes, attending autopsies, and testifying in court. It was not long, however, before detectives began appreciating the value of their work. Pinker went to work on some of the most notorious crime cases in Los Angeles, including the "Black Dahlia" murder in 1947.

During the 1950s, the television series "Dragnet" featured a police forensics character inspired by Pinker, even naming the character "Raymond Pinker."

Pinker retired from the LAPD in 1965 after 36 years as Chief Forensics Specialist. He went on to teach forensic science at California State University, Los Angeles. Pinker died in 1979.

L.A. Video

Also see L.A. Video: Hertzberg Davis Forensic Science Center.

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On July 1, 1923, Officer Rex Welsh of the Los Angeles Police Department was assigned to be the department's first criminalist and tasked with setting up a scientific laboratory to support criminal investigations. This was part of Chief August Vollmer's efforts to modernize and bring innovation into the department.

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The 1925 serum run to Nome (the "Great Race of Mercy") relays diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled across the U.S. territory of Alaska

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The 1925 serum run to Nome (the "Great Race of Mercy") relays diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled across the U.S. territory of Alaska

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The 1925 serum run to Nome, also known as the Great Race of Mercy and The Serum Run, was a transport of diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled relay across the U.S. territory of Alaska by 20 mushers and about 150 sled dogs across 674 miles (1,085 km) in 5 ½ days, saving the small town of Nome and the surrounding communities from a developing epidemic.

Both the mushers and their dogs were portrayed as heroes in the newly popular medium of radio, and received headline coverage in newspapers across the United States. Balto, the lead sled dog on the final stretch into Nome, became the most famous canine celebrity of the era after Rin Tin Tin, and his statue is a popular tourist attraction in both New York City's Central Park and downtown Anchorage, Alaska, but it was Togo who covered the longest stretch out of the run which is 260 miles while Balto covered 55 miles. The publicity also helped spur an inoculation campaign in the U.S. that dramatically reduced the threat of the disease.

The sled dog was the primary means of transportation and communication in subarctic communities around the world, and the race became both the last great hurrah and the most famous event in the history of mushing, before the first aircraft in the late 1920s and then the snowmobile in the 1960s drove the dog sled almost into extinction. The world famous Iditarod Race was not conceived to commemorate the serum run but as a race that the co-founders hoped would bring sled dogs back to the villages.

Nome, Alaska lies approximately 2 degrees south of the Arctic Circle, and while greatly diminished from its peak of 20,000 inhabitants during the gold rush days, at the turn of the 20th century, it was still the largest town in northern Alaska in 1925, with 455 Alaska Natives and 975 settlers of European descent.

From November to July, the port on the southern shore of the Seward Peninsula of the Bering Sea was icebound and inaccessible by steamship. The only link to the rest of the world during the winter was the Iditarod Trail, which ran 938 miles (1,510 km) from the port of Seward in the south, across several mountain ranges and the vast Alaska Interior before reaching Nome. The primary source of mail and needed supplies in 1925 was the dog sled, but within a decade, bush pilots would become the dominant method of transportation during the winter months.

In the winter of 1924-1925, Curtis Welch was the only doctor in Nome, who served the town and the surrounding communities; he was supported by four nurses at the 25 bed Maynard Columbus Hospital. Several months earlier, Welch had placed an order for more diphtheria antitoxin after discovering that the hospital's entire batch had expired. However, the replacement shipment did not arrive before the port was closed by ice for the winter, and more could not be shipped in to Nome until spring.

In December 1924, several days after the last ship left the port, Welch treated a few children for what he first diagnosed as sore throats or tonsillitis, initially dismissing diphtheria as it is extremely contagious, and he would have expected to see more symptoms in family members, or other cases around town, instead of a few isolated cases. In the next few weeks, as the number of "tonsillitis" cases grew and four children died, whom Welch had not been able to autopsy, he became increasingly concerned about diphtheria.

By mid-January 1925, Welch officially diagnosed the first case of diphtheria in a three-year-old boy who died only two weeks after first becoming ill. The following day, when a seven-year-old girl presented the same tell-tale symptoms of diphtheria, Welch attempted to administer some of the expired antitoxin to see if it might still have any effect, but the girl died a few hours later. Realizing that an epidemic was imminent, that same evening, Welch called Mayor George Maynard to arrange an emergency town council meeting. The council immediately implemented a quarantine. The following day, on January 22, 1925, Welch sent radio telegrams to all other major towns in Alaska alerting them of public health risk and he also sent one to the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington, D.C. asking for assistance. His message to the Public Health Service said:

AN EPIDEMIC OF DIPHTHERIA IS ALMOST INEVITABLE HERE STOP I AM IN URGENT NEED OF ONE MILLION UNITS OF DIPHTHERIA ANTITOXIN STOP MAIL IS ONLY FORM OF TRANSPORTATION STOP I HAVE MADE APPLICATION TO COMMISSIONER OF HEALTH OF THE TERRITORIES FOR ANTITOXIN ALREADY STOP THERE ARE ABOUT 3000 WHITE NATIVES IN THE DISTRICT

Despite the quarantine, there were over 20 confirmed cases of diphtheria and at least 50 more at risk by the end of January. Without antitoxin, it was expected that in the surrounding region's population of around 10,000 people, the mortality rate could be close to 100 percent. A previous influenza pandemic of the so-called " Spanish flu" had hit the area in 1918 and 1919 and wiped out about 50 percent of the native population of Nome, and 8 percent of the native population of Alaska. More than 1,000 people died in northwest Alaska, and double that across the state. The majority were Alaska Natives who did not have resistance to either disease.

At the January 24 meeting of the board of health, superintendent Mark Summers of the Hammon Consolidated Gold Fields proposed a dogsled relay using two fast teams. One would start at Nenana and the other at Nome, and they would meet at Nulato. The trip from Nulato to Nome normally took 30 days, although the record was nine. Welch estimated that the serum would only last six days under the brutal conditions on the trail. Summers' employee, the Norwegian Leonhard Seppala, was chosen for the 630 mile (1,014 km) round trip from Nome to Nulato and back. He had previously made the run from Nome to Nulato in a record-breaking four days, won the All-Alaska Sweepstakes three times, and had become something of a legend for his athletic ability and rapport with his Siberian huskies. His lead dog, the 12 year-old Togo, was equally famous for his leadership, intelligence, and ability to sense danger.

Mayor Maynard proposed flying the antitoxin by aircraft. In February 1924, the first winter aircraft flight in Alaska had been conducted between Fairbanks and McGrath by Carl Eielson, who flew a reliable De Havilland DH-4 issued by the U.S. Post Office on eight experimental trips. The longest flight was only 260 miles (420 km), the worst conditions were −10 °F (−23 °C) which required so much winter clothing that the plane was almost unflyable, and the plane made several crash landings.

The only planes operating in Alaska in 1925 were three vintage Standard J biplanes belonging to Bennet Rodebaugh's Fairbanks Airplane company (later Wien Air Alaska) The aircraft were dismantled for the winter, had open cockpits, and had water-cooled engines that were unreliable in cold weather. Since both pilots were in the contiguous United States, Alaska Delegate Dan Sutherland attempted to get the authorization to use an inexperienced pilot, Roy Darling.

While potentially quicker, the board of health rejected the option and voted unanimously for the dogsled relay. Seppala was notified that evening and immediately started preparations for the trip.

The U.S. Public Health Service had located 1.1 million units of serum in West Coast hospitals which could be shipped to Seattle, and then transported to Alaska. The Alameda would be the next ship north, and would not arrive in Seattle until January 31, and then would take another 6 to 7 days to arrive in Seward. On January 26, the Anchorage Railroad Hospital found 300,000 forgotten units, after the chief of surgery, John Beeson, heard of the need. The supply was wrapped in glass vials, then padded quilts, and finally a metallic cylinder weighing a little more than 20 pounds. At Governor Scott Bone's order, it was packed and handed to conductor Frank Knight, who arrived in Nenana on January 27. While not sufficient to defeat the epidemic, the 300,000 units could hold it at bay until the larger shipment arrived.

The temperatures across the Interior were at 20 year lows due to a high pressure system from the Arctic, and in Fairbanks the temperature was −50 °F (−46 °C). A second system was burying the Panhandle, as 25 mph (40 km/h) winds swept snow into 10-foot (3.05 m) drifts. Travel by sea was hazardous, and across the Interior most forms of transportation shut down. In addition, there were limited hours of daylight to fly, due to the polar night.

While the first batch of serum was traveling to Nenana, Governor Bone gave final authorization to the dog relay, but ordered Edward Wetzler, the U.S. Post Office inspector, to arrange a relay of the best drivers and dogs across the Interior. The teams would travel day and night until they handed off the package to Seppala at Nulato.

The decision outraged William Fentress "Wrong Font" Thompson, publisher of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and aircraft advocate, who helped line up the pilot and plane. He used his paper to write scathing editorials.

The mail route from Nenana to Nome spanned 674 miles (1,085 km) in total. It crossed the barren Alaska Interior, following the Tanana River for 137 miles (220 km) to the village Tanana at the junction with the Yukon River, and then following the Yukon for 230 miles (370 km) to Kaltag. The route then passed west 90 miles (140 km) over the Kaltag Portage to Unalakleet on the shore of Norton Sound. The route then continued for 208 miles (335 km) northwest around the southern shore of the Seward Peninsula with no protection from gales and blizzards, including a 42 miles (68 km) stretch across the shifting ice of the Bering Sea.

Wetzler contacted Tom Parson, an agent of the Northern Commercial Company, which contracted to deliver mail between Fairbanks and Unalakleet. Telephones and telegraphs turned the drivers back to their assigned roadhouses. The mail carriers held a revered position in the territory, and were the best dog mushers in Alaska. The majority of relay drivers across the Interior were native Athabaskans, direct descendants of the original dog mushers.

The first musher in the relay was "Wild Bill" Shannon, who was handed the 20 pounds (9.1 kg) package at the train station in Nenana on January 27 at 9:00 pm AKST by night. Despite a temperature of −50 °F (−46 °C), Shannon left immediately with his team of 11 inexperienced dogs, led by Blackie. The temperature began to drop, and the team was forced onto the colder ice of the river because the trail had been destroyed by horses.

Despite jogging alongside the sled to keep warm, Shannon developed hypothermia. He reached Minto at 3 am, with parts of his face black from frostbite. The temperature was −62 °F (−52 °C). After warming the serum by the fire and resting for four hours, Shannon dropped three dogs and left with the remaining 8. The three dogs died shortly after Shannon returned for them, and a fourth may have died as well.

Half-Athabaskan Edgar Kalland arrived in Minto the night before, and was sent back to Tolovana, traveling 70 mi (110 km) the day before the relay. Shannon and his team arrived in bad shape at 11 am, and handed over the serum. After warming the serum in the roadhouse, Kalland headed into the forest. The temperature had risen to −56 °F (−49 °C), and according to at least one report the owner of the roadhouse at Manley Hot Springs had to pour water over Kallands' hands to get them off the sled's handlebar when he arrived at 4 pm.

No new cases of diphtheria were diagnosed on January 28, but two new cases were diagnosed on January 29. The quarantine had been obeyed but lack of diagnostic tools and the contagiousness of the strain rendered it ineffective. More units of serum were discovered around Juneau the same day. While no count exists, the estimate based on weight is roughly 125,000 units, enough to treat 4 to 6 patients. The crisis had become headline news in newspapers, including San Francisco, Cleveland, Washington D.C., and New York, and spread to the radio sets which were just becoming common. The storm system from Alaska hit the contiguous United States, bringing record lows to New York, and freezing the Hudson River.

A fifth death occurred on January 30. Maynard and Sutherland renewed their campaign for flying the remaining serum by plane. Different proposals included flying a large aircraft 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from Seattle to Nome, carrying a plane to the edge of the pack ice via Navy ship and launching it, and the original plan of flying the serum from Fairbanks. Despite receiving headline coverage across the country, the support of several cabinet departments, and from Arctic explorer Roald Amundsen, the plans were rejected by experienced pilots, the Navy, and Governor Bone. Thompson's editorials waxed virulent against those opposing using airplanes.

In response, Bone decided to speed up the relay and authorized additional drivers for Seppala's leg of the relay, so they could travel without rest. Seppala was still scheduled to cover the most dangerous leg, the shortcut across Norton Sound, but the telephone and telegraph systems bypassed the small villages he was passing through, and there was no way to tell him to wait at Shaktoolik. The plan relied on the driver from the north catching Seppala on the trail. Summers arranged for drivers along the last leg, including Seppala's colleague Gunnar Kaasen.

From Manley Hot Springs, the serum passed through largely Athabascan hands before George Nollner delivered it to Charlie Evans at Bishop Mountain on January 30 at 3 am. The temperature had warmed slightly, but at −62 °F (−52 °C), was dropping again. Evans relied on his lead dogs when he passed through ice fog where the Koyukuk River had broken through and surged over the ice, but forgot to protect the groins of his two short-haired mixed breed lead dogs with rabbit skins. Both dogs collapsed with frostbite, with Evans having to take their place himself pulling the sled. He arrived at 10 am; both dogs were dead. Tommy Patsy departed within half an hour.

The serum then crossed the Kaltag Portage in the hands of Jack Nicolai aka "Jackscrew" and the Alaska Native Victor Anagick, who handed it to his fellow Alaska Native Myles Gonangnan on the shores of the Sound, at Unalakleet on January 31 at 5 am. Gonangnan saw the signs of a storm brewing, and decided not to take the shortcut across the dangerous ice of the Sound. He departed at 5:30 am, and as he crossed the hills, "the eddies of drifting, swirling snow passing between the dog's legs and under the bellies made them appear to be fording a fast running river." The whiteout conditions cleared as he reached the shore, and the gale-force winds drove the wind chill to −70 °F (−57 °C). At 3 pm he arrived at Shaktoolik. Seppala was not there, but Henry Ivanoff was waiting just in case.

On January 30, the number of cases in Nome had reached 27 and the antitoxin was depleted. According to a reporter living in Nome, "All hope is in the dogs and their heroic drivers ... Nome appears to be a deserted city." With the report of Gonangnan's progress on January 31, Welch believed the serum would arrive there in February.

Leonhard Seppala and his dog sled team, with his lead dog Togo, traveled 91 miles (146 km) from Nome from January 27 to January 31 into the oncoming storm. They took the shortcut across the Norton Sound, and headed toward Shaktoolik. The temperature in Nome was a relatively warm −20 °F (−29 °C), but in Shaktoolik the temperature was estimated at −30 °F (−34 °C), and the gale force winds causing a wind chill of −85 °F (−65 °C). Togo ran 350 miles for his part of the run.

Henry Ivanoff's team ran into a reindeer and got tangled up just outside Shaktoolik. Seppala still believed he had more than 100 miles (160 km) to go and was racing to get off the Norton Sound before the storm hit. He was passing the team when Ivanoff shouted, "The serum! The serum! I have it here!"

With the news of the worsening epidemic, Seppala decided to brave the storm and once again set out across the exposed open ice of the Norton Sound when he reached Ungalik, after dark. The temperature was estimated at −30 °F (−34 °C), but the wind chill with the gale force winds was −85 °F (−65 °C). Togo led the team in a straight line through the dark, and they arrived at the roadhouse in Isaac's Point on the other side at 8 pm. In one day, they had traveled 84 mi (135 km), averaging 8 mph (13 km/h). The team rested, and departed at 2 am into the full power of the storm.

During the night the temperature dropped to −40 °F (−40 °C), and the wind increased to storm force (at least 65 mph [105 km/h]). The team ran across the ice while following the shoreline. They returned to shore to cross Little McKinley Mountain, climbing 5,000 feet (1,500 m). After descending to the next roadhouse in Golovin, Seppala passed the serum to Charlie Olsen on February 1 at 3 pm.

On February 1, the number of cases in Nome rose to 28. The serum en route was sufficient to treat 30 people. With the powerful blizzard raging and winds of 80 mph (130 km/h), Welch ordered a stop to the relay until the storm passed, reasoning that a delay was better than the risk of losing it all. Messages were left at Solomon and Point Safety before the lines went dead.

Olsen was blown off the trail, and suffered severe frostbite in his hands while putting blankets on his dogs. The wind chill was −70 °F (−57 °C). He arrived at Bluff on February 1 at 7 pm in poor shape. Gunnar Kaasen waited until 10 pm for the storm to break, but it only got worse and the drifts would soon block the trail so he departed into a headwind.

Kaasen traveled through the night, through drifts, and river overflow over the 600-foot (183 m) Topkok Mountain. Balto led the team through visibility so poor that Kaasen could not always see the dogs harnessed closest to the sled. He was two miles (3 km) past Solomon before he realized it, and kept going. The winds after Solomon were so severe that his sled flipped over and he almost lost the cylinder containing the serum when it fell off and became buried in the snow. He also suffered frostbite when he had to use his bare hands to feel for the cylinder.

Kaasen reached Point Safety ahead of schedule on February 2, at 3 am. Ed Rohn believed that Kaasen and the relay was halted at Solomon, so he was sleeping. Since the weather was improving, it would take time to prepare Rohn's team, and Balto and the other dogs were moving well, Kaasen pressed on the remaining 25 miles (40 km) to Nome, reaching Front Street at 5:30 am. Not a single ampule was broken, and the antitoxin was thawed and ready by noon.

Together, the teams covered the 674 miles (1,085 km) in 127 ½ hours, which was considered a world record, done in extreme subzero temperatures in near- blizzard conditions and hurricane-force winds. A number of dogs died during the trip.

Margaret Curran from the Solomon roadhouse was infected, which raised fears that the disease might spread from patrons of the roadhouse to other communities. The 1.1 million units had left Seattle on January 31, and were not due by dog sled until February 8. Welch asked for half the serum to be delivered by aircraft from Fairbanks. He contacted Thompson and Sutherland, and Darling made a test flight the next morning. With his health advisor, Governor Bone concluded the cases in Nome were actually going down, and withheld permission, but preparations went ahead. The U.S. Navy moved a minesweeper north from Seattle, and the Signal Corps were ordered to light fires to guide the planes.

By February 3, the original 300,000 units had proved to be still effective, and the epidemic was under control. A sixth death, probably unrelated to diphtheria, was widely reported as a new outbreak of the disease. The batch from Seattle arrived on board the Admiral Watson on February 7. Acceding to pressure, Governor Bone authorized half to be delivered by plane. On February 8 the first half of the second shipment began its trip by dog sled, while the plane failed to start when a broken radiator shutter caused the engine to overheat. The plane failed the next day as well, and the mission was scrapped. Thompson was gracious in his editorials.

The second relay included many of the same drivers, and also faced harsh conditions. The serum arrived on February 15.

The death toll from diphtheria in Nome is officially listed as either 5, 6, or 7, but Welch later estimated there were probably at least 100 additional cases among "the Eskimo camps outside the city. The Natives have a habit of burying their children without reporting the death." Forty-three new cases were diagnosed in 1926, but they were easily managed with the fresh supply of serum.(footnotes, pp 235, 243)

All participants in the dogsleds received letters of commendation from President Calvin Coolidge, and the Senate stopped work to recognize the event. Each musher during the first relay received a gold medal from the H. K. Mulford Company. The mayor of Los Angeles presented a bone-shaped key to the city to Balto in front of City Hall; silent-film actress Mary Pickford put a wreath around the canine's neck. Poems and letters from children poured in, and spontaneous fundraising campaigns sprang up around the country.

Gunnar Kaasen and his team became celebrities and toured the West Coast from February 1925 to February 1926, and even starred in a 30 minute film entitled Balto's Race to Nome. A statue of Balto by sculptor Frederick Roth was unveiled in New York City's Central Park during a visit on December 15, 1925. Balto and the other dogs later became part of a sideshow and lived in horrible conditions until they were rescued by George Kimble, who organized a fundraising campaign by the children of Cleveland, Ohio. On March 19, 1927, the dogs received a hero's welcome as they arrived at their permanent home at the Cleveland Zoo. Because of his age, Balto was euthanised on March 14, 1933, at the age of 14. He was mounted and placed on display in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

In October 1926, Seppala took Togo and his team on a tour from Seattle to California, and then across the Midwest to New England, and consistently drew huge crowds. They were featured at Madison Square Garden in New York City for 10 days, and Togo received a gold medal from Roald Amundsen. In New England Seppala's team of Siberian huskies ran in many races, easily defeating the local Chinooks. Seppala sold most of his team to a kennel in Poland Spring, Maine. Seppala visited Togo, until he was euthanised on December 5, 1929. After his death, Seppala had Togo preserved and mounted, and today the dog is on display in a glass case at the Iditarod museum in Wasilla, Alaska.

None of the other mushers received the same degree of attention, though Wild Bill Shannon briefly toured with Blackie. The media largely ignored the Athabaskan and Alaska Native mushers, who covered two-thirds of the distance to Nome. According to Edgar Kalland, "it was just an everyday occurrence as far as we were concerned."

The serum race helped spur the Kelly Act, which was signed into law on February 2. The bill allowed private aviation companies to bid on mail delivery contracts. Technology improved and within a decade, air mail routes were established in Alaska. The last mail delivery by private dog sled under contract took place in 1938, and the last U.S. Post Office dog sled route closed in 1963. Dog sledding remained popular in the rural interior but became nearly extinct when snowmobiles spread in the 1960s. Mushing was revitalized as a recreational sport in the 1970s with the immense popularity of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

While the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which runs more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Anchorage to Nome is actually based on the All-Alaska Sweepstakes, it has many traditions that commemorate the race to deliver the serum to Nome, especially Seppala and Togo. The honorary musher for the first seven races was Leonhard Seppala. Other serum run participants, including "Wild Bill" Shannon, Edgar Kalland, Bill McCarty, Charlie Evans, Edgar Nollner, Harry Pitka, and Henry Ivanoff have also been honored. The 2005 Iditarod honored Jirdes Winther Baxter, the last known survivor of the epidemic. The position is now known as Leonhard Seppala's Honorary Musher, the Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award is given to the musher who provides the best dog care while still remaining competitive, and the Leonhard Seppala Heritage Grant is an Iditarod scholarship. The two races follow the same route from Ruby to Nome.

A reenactment of the serum run was held in 1975, which took 6 days longer than the 1925 serum run, or more than twice the total time. Many of the participants were descendants of the original 20. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan sent a letter of recognition to Charlie Evans, Edgar Nollner, and Bill McCarty, the only remaining survivors. Nollner was the last to die, on January 18, 1999, of a heart attack.

The relay has been immortalized in various media. In 1976, the story was retold in Race against Death: A True Story of the Far North, by noted children's author Seymour Reit, which was featured in a 1978 episode of The Book Bird, a long-running anthology of children's literature on PBS. The 1995 animated film was loosely based on the events of the final leg of the serum run, although all of the characters besides Balto, and subplots, are fictional. A detailed recounting of the people and events involved in the serum run, including the story of the native mushers and the local nurses who attended to the sick and dying, is given in the 2003 book, The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic, by Gay and Laney Salisbury. In 2013, a documentary titled Icebound - The Greatest Dog Story Ever Told, focused on the aftermath of the events. The Great Alaskan Race, a 2019 film,produced by Rebel Road Entertainment, is based on the serum run. , produced by Walt Disney Pictures, debuted on December 20, 2019 on Disney+.

There is much controversy surrounding Balto's role in this race and the statue in Central Park. A premier musher, Seppala was sent to run 170 miles (270 km) across some of the most dangerous and treacherous parts of the run. He met the serum runner (to his surprise, since he had anticipated having to make the entire run alone), took the handoff, and returned another 91 miles (146 km), having run over 261 miles (420 km) in total. He then handed the serum off to Charlie Olson. Olson carried it 25 miles (40 km) to Bluff where he turned it over to Gunnar Kaasen. Kaasen was supposed to hand off the serum to Rohn at Port Safety, but Rohn had gone to sleep and Kaasen decided to keep going to Nome. In all, Kaasen and Balto ran a total of 53 miles (85 km). Kaasen maintained that he decided to continue since there were no lights on in the cabin where Rohn was sleeping and he didn't want to waste time, but many thought his decision to not wake Rohn was motivated by a desire to grab the glory for himself and Balto.

According to Togo's musher, Leonhard Seppala, Balto was a scrub freight dog that he left behind when he set out on the trip. He also asserted that Kaasen's lead dog was actually a dog named Fox, but that news agents of the time thought that Balto was a more newsworthy name.

The Central Park statue of Balto was modeled after Balto, but shows him wearing Togo's colors (awards). The inscription reads, "Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxin 600 miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters, through arctic blizzards, from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome." In the last years of his life Seppala was heartbroken by the way the credit had gone to Balto; in his mind, Togo was the real hero of the serum race. According to the National Park Service, in 1960 Seppala said:

I never had a better dog than Togo. His stamina, loyalty, and intelligence could not be improved upon. Togo was the best dog that ever traveled the Alaska trail.

Katy Steinmetz, writing in magazine, also thought that Togo was the greatest sled dog of all time. In the serum run, she wrote, Togo was the real hero:

... the dog that often gets credit for eventually saving the town is Balto, but he just happened to run the last, 55 mile leg in the race. The sled dog who did the lion's share of the work was Togo. His journey, fraught with white-out storms, was the longest by 200 miles and included a traverse across perilous Norton Sound - where he saved his team and driver in a courageous swim through ice floes.

Mushers (in order) and the distances they covered. Most legs were planned to be about the 25 miles long, generally accepted as an "extreme day's mush".

January 27

"Wild" Bill Shannon

Nenana to Minto to Tolovana
Team of 11 Alaskan Malamutes. Around 11:00 pm January 27, 1925, Shannon received the serum and written instructions from the conductor. Temperatures ranged from −40 °F to −62 °F. At 3:00 am, Shannon arrived in Campbell's Roadhouse in Minto, rested for four hours before setting off again, this time with only 8 dogs as three of his dogs, Cub, Jack and Jet, had been injured from the cold. Later, these three dogs ended up dying from lung injuries. Shannon suffered severe facial frostbite.

52 mi (84 km)

Tommy "Patsy" Patson

Nulato to Kaltag
Patson, a Koyukuk Native, also a mail carrier, ran a fairly straight trail, setting the fastest speed recorded during the Serum Race, covering 36 miles in ​ hours at an average speed of more than 10 mph.

36 mi (58 km)

Jack "Jackscrew" Nicolai

Kaltag to Old Woman Shelter
An Alaskan Athabaskan, Jackscrew was a small man known for his unusual strength. During his partial night run, he jogged to lighten the sled until passing the Kaltag Divide, then a downhill trail toward Norton Sound. Arrived at Old Woman Cabin a 9:10 pm Friday evening, averaging almost 6 mph for 40 miles of difficult trail.

40 mi (64 km)

January 31

Myles Gonangnan

Unalakleet to Shaktoolik

40 mi (64 km)

Henry Ivanoff

Shaktoolik to just outside Shaktoolik
Part Russian Eskimo, Ivanoff started toward Golovin. About a half mile out of Shaktoolik, he had to settle a fight in his team. While he was stopped he saw Seppala's Siberian Husky team approaching from the other direction. Passes serum to Seppala a short distance out of town.

0.5 mi (0.8 km)

Leonhard Seppala

Just outside Shaktoolik to Ungalik to Isaac's Point to Golovin
Lead dogs: Togo and Scotty, team of 6 Siberian Huskies. Forty-eight-year-old Seppala, with a team of 6 dogs had left Nome with the intent of intercepting the serum at Nulato, unaware that the relays had been faster. Leaving Isaac's Point on the north side of Norton Bay that morning, traveled the 43 miles to just outside Shaktoolik, meeting Ivanoff. Turned his team around into the wind with a temperature of −30 °F and darkness. Risked the 20 mile sea ice crossing between Cape Denbigh and Point Dexter in a blinding blizzard. Togo's sense of smell permitted them to stay on course and got them to their stopping point on the North shore of Norton Bay, at an Eskimo sod igloo. Seppala fed the dogs and warmed the serum, hoping the blizzard would lessen. Early Sunday morning with −30 °F temperatures, deadly winds, and the storm not lessening, reached Dexter's Roadhouse at Golovin with completely exhausted dogs. Serum now 78 miles from Nome.

261 mi (420 km)

Gunnar Kaasen

Bluff to Safety to Nome
Lead dog: Balto. Forty-two-year-old Kaasen and his team of 13 dogs were sent from Nome to Bluff to await the serum, while Ed Rohn was sent to Pt. Safety. With chest-deep snow drifts and glare ice, he was unable to see the trail and relied on Balto to guide the sled. A message was sent to the village of Solomn instructing Kaasen to wait out the storm there. Due to the severity of the storm, Kaasen missed the village as Balto kept them on the main trail passing to the south. Crossing Bonanza flat the sled was flipped by the wind, ejecting the serum. After searching in the dark on hands and knees, Kaasen found the package and continued. Arrived at Safety sometime after 2:00 am Sunday.

Musher Ed Rohn, who was supposed to take the Serum the final leg into Nome, was asleep expecting Kaasen to be held up waiting out the blizzard. Kaasen, deciding not to wake Rohn, began the final 21 mile leg, arriving in Nome around 5:30 am, for a total time of seven and a half hours.

53 mi (85 km)

1. Coppock, Mike (August 2006). "The race to save Nome". American History. 41 (3): 56-63.

2. Donahue, Deirdre (29 July 2003). "'Miles' takes measure of canine, human heroism". USA Today.

3. Houdek, Jennifer. "The serum run of 1925". LitSite Alaska. University of Alaska Anchorage. Archived from the original on 27 November 2010.

4. Grefrath, Richard W. (1 August 2004). "The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic". Magill Book Reviews.

5. D'Oro, Rachel (December 5, 2013). "Going beyond Balto, new documentary shows life-saving sled dog run in Alaska 90 years ago". The Canadian Press.

6. ^ Segal, Victoria (12 January 2014). "Pick of the day". The Sunday Times. pp. 49-48.

7. ^ Kit, Borys (July 12, 2018). "Willem Dafoe to star in Disney adventure movie 'Togo' (exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter.

8. Macivor, Ivor (February 6, 1954). "The dog honors that strayed". Saturday Evening Post. Vol. 226 no. 32. pp. 93-93.

Page, Dorothy G. (1992). Polar Pilot. Danville, IL: Interstate Publishers. ISBN 0-8134-2936-6.

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The 1925 serum run to Nome, also known as the Great Race of Mercy and The Serum Run, was a transport of diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled relay across the U.S. territory of Alaska by 20 mushers and about 150 sled dogs across 674 miles (1,085 km) in 5 ½ days, saving the small town of Nome and the surrounding communities from a developing epidemic.

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1925- NY City establishes Bureau of Forensics Ballistics

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1925- NY City establishes Bureau of Forensics Ballistics

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1925

Calvin Goddard

Courtesy of FirearmsID.com

Charles E. Waite, Calvin H. Goddard, Philip O. Gravelle, and John H. Fisher established the Bureau of Forensic Ballistics in New York City. The Bureau was formed to provide firearms identification services throughout the United States. After Waite died in 1926, Goddard headed the bureau until it disbanded in 1929.

Gravelle and Goddard applied comparison microscopy to the field of firearms identification. This allowed the examiner to more readily identify matching striae.

Goddard and Fisher developed the helixometer, a magnifier probe used to examine the interior of firearm barrels and accurately measure the pitch of rifling. Limited application led to its obsolescence.

In June 1925, the Saturday Evening Post published a two-part series of articles entitled "Fingerprinting Bullets - The Silent Witness." These articles were instrumental in informing the public about both the science of firearm identification and the availability of services offered by the Bureau of Forensic Ballistics.

1926

Captain Edward C. 'Ned' Crossman, a well-known shooter and sports writer, examined firearms evidence for the Los Angeles County sheriff. He became associated with the Bureau of Forensic Ballistics, serving as a regional representative for the western portion of the United States.

1927

Sacco & Vanzetti's firearm

A special committee was appointed to review the findings of the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Colonel Calvin Goddard used the comparison microscope and helixometer (recent technological advancements previously unavailable) to reexamine recovered evidence bullets and cartridge cases. He was able to verify that one fatal bullet and one cartridge case had been fired from Sacco's pistol. These findings were verified by subsequent reexaminations in 1961 and 1983.

1929

Thompson machine gun

Intense public interest surrounding the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (February 14, 1929, Chicago, Illinois), coupled with rumors that police officers may have been involved, prompted local officials to impanel a grand jury to investigate the slaying of seven gangsters by a rival gangster group.

The grand jury foreman engaged the services of Calvin H. Goddard of the Bureau of Forensic Ballistics to examine firearms-related evidence, which included fired bullets, pellets, fired shotshell cases, and fired cartridge cases. Goddard concluded that the killers had used one 12-gauge shotgun and two Thompson submachine guns. He noted that one of the Thompson submachine guns was fired using a fifty-round drum magazine while the other was fired using a twenty-round magazine.

Goddard tested all police Thompson submachine guns, comparing them to the crime scene evidence. He determined that none of the police weapons were used in the killings; he subsequently identified firearms obtained during the search of a suspect's home as the murder weapons.

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1925 Calvin Goddard Courtesy of FirearmsID.com Charles E. Waite, Calvin H. Goddard, Philip O. Gravelle, and John H. Fisher established the Bureau of Forensic Ballistics in New York City. The Bureau was formed to provide firearms identification services throughout the United States. After Waite died in 1926, Goddard headed the bureau until it disbanded in 1929.

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1929- Calvin Goddard, first to match a bullet to a gun

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1929- Calvin Goddard, first to match a bullet to a gun

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For others with the same name, see Calvin Goddard

Calvin Hooker Goddard (30 October 1891 - 22 February 1955) was a forensic scientist, army officer, academic, researcher and a pioneer in forensic ballistics. He examined the bullet casings in the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre and showed that the guns used were not police issued weapons, leading the investigators to conclude it was a mob hit.

He was born in Baltimore, Maryland. After graduating from the Boys' Latin School of Maryland in 1907, Goddard graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1911 from the Johns Hopkins University and then earned a medical degree and graduated in 1915.

He joined the United States Army and became a Colonel. He was also a professor of police science at Northwestern University and the Military Editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was also the editor of the American Journal of Police Science, America's first scientific police journal. Colonel Goddard commanded the US Army Crime Laboratory in Japan for a number of years after World War II. Calvin Goddard brought professionalism, the use of the scientific method, and reliability to Forensic Firearm Identification, at a time when charlatanism was rampant in this field. His testimony in 1923 in the Frye case and others, paved the way for judicial acceptance of Firearms Identification. According to Goddard's grandson, he may have been the only army officer who served in four branches: Ordnance Corps, Military Police Corps, Medical Corps and became a Military Historian.

He died on 22 February 1955.

In 1925 Goddard wrote an article for the Army Ordnance titled "Forensic Ballistics" in which he described the use of the comparison microscope regarding firearms investigations. He is generally credited with the conception of the term "forensic ballistics", though he later admitted it to be an inadequate name for the science. In April 1925, Major Goddard established the Bureau of Forensic Ballistics in New York City with C. E. Waite, Philip O. Gravelle and John H. Fisher. The Bureau was formed to provide firearms identification services throughout America. Goddard researched, authored and spoke extensively on the subject of forensic ballistics and firearms identification, becoming the internationally renowned pioneer in forensic ballistics. The Bureau of Forensic Ballistics was the United States' first independent criminalistics laboratory, which Goddard headed, and where ballistics, fingerprinting, blood analysis and trace evidence were brought under one roof. When the lab began publishing the American Journal of Police Science, which was edited by Colonel Goddard, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover strongly encouraged his special agents in charge to subscribe to it and he supplied articles on fingerprint issues and Bureau responsibilities to the journal. The following year the Bureau contributed three articles for the journal's series entitled "Organized Protection Against Organized Crime". Hoover also sent a number of representatives to a symposium that Goddard sponsored on scientific crime detection. He was also an advisor to FBI when they set up a similar forensic laboratory.

Philip O. Gravelle developed the comparison microscope for the identification of fired bullets and cartridge cases with the support and guidance of Major Calvin H. Goddard. It was a giant leap in the science of firearms identification in forensic science. The firearm from which a bullet or cartridge case has been fired is identified by the comparison of the unique striae left on the bullet or cartridge case from the worn, machined metal of the barrel, breach block, extractor, or firing pin in the gun. It was Gravelle who mistrusted his memory. "As long as he could inspect only one bullet at a time with his microscope, and had to keep the picture of it in his memory until he placed the comparison bullet under the microscope, scientific precision could not be attained. He invented the comparison microscope and Goddard made it work." Sir Sydney Smith also appreciated the idea, emphasizing the importance of stereo-microscope in forensic science and firearms identification. He took the comparison microscope to Scotland and introduced it to the European scientists for firearms identification and other forensic uses.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolommeo Vanzetti were two Italian-born American anarchists, who were arrested for the murder of security guard Alessandro Berardelli and the robbery of US$15,766.51 from the factory's payroll in South Braintree, Massachusetts during the afternoon of April 15, 1920. During the trial a worldwide outcry arose, with the firm belief based on railroaded justice and racial prejudice. On April 8, 1927, their appeals exhausted, Sacco and Vanzetti were finally sentenced to death in the electric chair. A worldwide outcry arose and Governor Alvin T. Fuller finally agreed to postpone the executions and set up a committee to reconsider the case. By this time, firearms examination had improved considerably, and it was now known that an automatic pistol could be traced by several different methods if both bullet and casing were recovered from the scene. Automatic pistols could now be traced by unique markings of the rifling on the bullet, by firing pin indentations on the fired primer, or by unique ejector and extractor marks on the casing. The committee appointed to review the case used the services of Major Calvin Goddard in 1927. Major Goddard used Philip Gravelle's newly invented comparison microscope and helixometer, a hollow, lighted magnifier probe used to inspect gun barrels, to make an examination of Sacco's .32 Savage Model 1907, the bullet that allegedly killed Berardelli, and the spent casings allegedly recovered from the scene of the crime. (Defenders of Sacco and Vanzetti claim that the bullet and cartridge case linked to Sacco's pistol were substituted for genuine evidence by the Massachusetts police.) In the presence of one of the defense experts, he fired several test bullets from Sacco's gun into a wad of cotton and prepared them for a comparative examination. He then put the ejected shell casings on the comparison microscope next to casings recovered at the South Braintree murder scene. Then he analyzed them carefully. The third bullet, designated Bullet III matched the rifling marks found on the barrel of Sacco's pistol, while firing pin marks on a .32 spent casing recovered from the murder scene matched a test shell casing known to have been fired from Sacco's pistol. Even the defense expert agreed that the two cartridges had been fired from the same gun. The second original defense expert also concurred. The committee upheld the convictions. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were found guilty and executed via electrocution in Massachusetts on August 23, 1927.

Later Investigations

One piece of evidence supporting the possibility of Sacco's guilt arose in 1941 when anarchist leader Carlo Tresca, a member of the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee, told Max Eastman, "Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was innocent." Eastman published an article recounting his conversation with Tresca in National Review in 1961. Later, others would confirm being told the same information by Tresca, but Tresca's daughter insisted she never told him. Others pointed to an ongoing feud between Tresca and the Galleanists, claiming the famous anarchist was just trying to get even.

In October 1961, ballistics tests were run with improved technology using Sacco's pistol. The results confirmed that the bullet that killed Berardelli in 1920 came from the same .32 ACP taken from the pistol in Sacco's possession. Subsequent investigations in 1983 also supported Goddard's findings, however, supporters of innocence have disputed both tests, nothing that ballistics experts conducting the first test had claimed Sacco's guilt even before the tests, and that by the 1980s, the old bullets and guns were far too rusty to prove anything. There was also no evidence Sacco had fired the gun.

The relevance of this evidence was challenged in 1987 when Charlie Whipple, a former Globe editorial page editor, stated that while working as a reporter back in 1937, he had a conversation with Boston Police Sergeant Edward J. Seibolt. According to Whipple, Seibolt told him that he was part of a "father-and-son ballistics team" who had worked on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, and that "we switched the murder weapon in that case." When Whipple asked why, Seibolt replied "we suspected the other side of switching weapons, so we just switched them back." When Whipple asked if he could print Seibolt's statement, Seibolt replied "If you do, I'll call you a liar." Whipple's story remained unsubstantiated, as Seibolt died in 1961 and never corroborated the story. Moreover, police records indicate that Seibolt was only a Patrolman at the time of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, and did not earn a promotion to Sergeant and a position as a ballistics expert with the Boston Police Department until October 1935. A full transcript of the hearings, on microfilm at Harvard Law School, shows that Judge Webster Thayer made no determination as to who had switched the barrels, but merely ordered the rusty barrel restored to Sacco's pistol.

Sacco's pistol is also claimed to have passed in and out of police custody, and to have been dismantled several times, both in 1924 prior to the gun barrel switch, and again between 1927 and 1961. The main problem with these charges is that the match to Sacco's gun was based not only the .32 pistol, but also to the same-caliber bullet that killed Berardelli, as well as to spent casings found at the scene. In addition to tampering with the pistol, the gun switcher/dismantler would also have had to access police evidence lockers and exchange the bullet from Berardelli's body and all spent casings retrieved by police, or else locate the actual murder weapon, then switch barrel, firing pin, ejector, and extractor, all before Goddard's examination in 1927 when the first match was made to Sacco's gun. However, skeptics of Sacco's guilt have repeatedly pointed to a single anomaly - that several witnesses to the crime insisted the gunman, alleged to be Sacco, fired four bullets into Berardelli. "He shot at Berardelli probably four or five times," one witness said. "He stood guard over him." If this was true, many ask, how could only one of the fatal bullets be linked to Sacco's gun? In 1927, the defense raised the suggestion that the fatal bullet had been planted, calling attention to the awkward scratches on the base of the bullet that differed from those on other bullets. The Lowell Commission dismissed this claim as desperate but in 1985, historians William Kaiser and David Young made a compelling case for a switch in their book "Post-Mortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti."

1. ^ Frederick N. Rasmussen (February 13, 2011). "Baltimore Native Helped Solve 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre". The Baltimore Sun. Archived from the original on February 15, 2016.

2. ^ Dr. James Edward Hamby, Colonel Calvin H. Goddard Award acceptance speech, June 29, 2006

3. ^ John Murdock, Calvin Goddard Award acceptance speech June 23, 2005.

4. ^ Olivier Perreault-Smith, LL.B, Media & Public Relations Coordinator, Forensic Technology Inc. Montreal,Canada

5. At that time he was a major in the Army, later promoted to colonel. Also, he is referred to in the book ^ The Untouchables as "Major Goddard" because that's what he was in the 1930s.

6. ^ Jurgen Thorwald, The Century of the Detective, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964

7. ^ Goddard, Calvin H. (Maj.), Who Did The Shooting?, Popular Science, Vol. 111 No. 5, ISSN 0161-7370 (November 1927), pp. 21-22, 171

8. ^ Whipple, Charles L., A Reporter Illuminates Shady Evidence in Sacco-Vanzetti Testimony, Nieman Reports, Northwestern University, Vol. 43 (Winter 1987)

9. State of Massachusetts, ^ Public documents of Massachusetts, Volume 3, p. 89

10. Thorwald, Jürgen, ^ The Century of the Detective, New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, ISBN 0-15-116350-2, ISBN 978-0-15-116350-2 (1965), p. 445

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For others with the same name, see Calvin Goddard Calvin Hooker Goddard (30 October 1891 - 22 February 1955) was a forensic scientist, army officer, academic, researcher and a pioneer in forensic ballistics. He examined the bullet casings in the 1929 St.

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Crowd gathering on Wall Street after the 1929 crash

The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, the Crash of 29 was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended in mid-November, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) collapsed. The pivotal role of the 1920s' high-flying bull market and the subsequent catastrophic collapse of the NYSE in late 1929 is often highlighted in explanations of the causes of the worldwide Great Depression.

It was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects. The Great Crash is mostly associated with October 24, 1929, called Black Thursday, the day of the largest sell-off of shares in U.S. history, and October 29, 1929, called Black Tuesday, when investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. The crash, which followed the London Stock Exchange's crash of September, signaled the beginning of the Great Depression.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, 1928-1930

The " Roaring Twenties", the decade following World War I that led to the crash, was a time of wealth and excess. Building on post-war optimism, rural Americans migrated to the cities in vast numbers throughout the decade with hopes of finding a more prosperous life in the ever-growing expansion of America's industrial sector.

Scholars believe that declines in the money supply caused by Federal Reserve decisions had a severely contractionary effect on output. Despite the inherent risk of speculation, it was widely believed that the stock market would continue to rise forever. On March 25, 1929, after the Federal Reserve warned of excessive speculation, a small crash occurred as investors started to sell stocks at a rapid pace, exposing the market's shaky foundation. Two days later, banker Charles E. Mitchell announced that his company, the National City Bank, would provide $25 million in credit to stop the market's slide. Mitchell's move brought a temporary halt to the financial crisis, and call money declined from 20 to 8 percent. However, the American economy showed ominous signs of trouble. Steel production declined, construction was sluggish, automobile sales went down, and consumers were building up large debts because of easy credit.

Despite all the economic warning signs and the market breaks in March and May 1929, stocks resumed their advance in June, and the gains continued almost unabated until early September 1929 (the Dow Jones average gained more than 20% between June and September). The market had been on a nine-year run that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average increase in value tenfold, peaking at 381.17 on September 3, 1929. Shortly before the crash, economist Irving Fisher famously proclaimed "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." The optimism and the financial gains of the great bull market were shaken after a well-publicized September 8 prediction from financial expert Roger Babson that "a crash is coming, and it may be terrific". The initial September decline was thus called the "Babson Break" in the press. That was the start of the Great Crash, but until the severe phase of the crash in October, many investors regarded the September "Babson Break" as a "healthy correction" and buying opportunity.

On September 20, 1929, top British investor Clarence Hatry and many of his associates were jailed for fraud and forgery, leading to the suspension of his companies. This may have weakened the confidence of Americans in their own companies, although it had minimal impact on the London Stock Exchange. In the days leading up to the crash, the market was severely unstable. Periods of selling and high volumes were interspersed with brief periods of rising prices and recovery.

Overall Price Index[clarification needed ]on Wall Street from just before the crash in 1929 to 1932 when the price bottomed out

Selling intensified in mid-October. On October 24, "Black Thursday", the market lost 11% of its value at the opening bell on very heavy trading. The huge volume meant that the report of prices on the ticker tape in brokerage offices around the nation was hours late, and so investors had no idea what most stocks were trading for. Several leading Wall Street bankers met to find a solution to the panic and chaos on the trading floor. The meeting included Thomas W. Lamont, acting head of Morgan Bank; Albert Wiggin, head of the Chase National Bank; and Charles E. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank of New York. They chose Richard Whitney, vice president of the Exchange, to act on their behalf.

With the bankers' financial resources behind him, Whitney placed a bid to purchase 25,000 shares of U.S. Steel at $205 per share, a price well above the current market. As traders watched, Whitney then placed similar bids on other " blue chip" stocks. The tactic was similar to one that had ended the Panic of 1907 and succeeded in halting the slide. The Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered, closing down only 6.38 points (2.09%) for the day.

The trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange Building in 1930, six months after the crash of 1929

On October 28, "Black Monday", more investors facing margin calls decided to get out of the market, and the slide continued with a record loss in the Dow for the day of 38.33 points, or 12.82%.

On October 29, 1929, "Black Tuesday" hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Around $14 billion of stock value was lost, wiping out thousands of investors. The panic selling reached its peak with some stocks having no buyers at any price. The Dow lost an additional 30.57 points, or 11.73%, for a total drop of 68.90 points, or 23.05% in two days.

On October 29, William C. Durant joined with members of the Rockefeller family and other financial giants to buy large quantities of stocks to demonstrate to the public their confidence in the market, but their efforts failed to stop the large decline in prices. The massive volume of stocks traded that day made the ticker continue to run until about 7:45 p.m.

After a one-day recovery on October 30, when the Dow regained 28.40 points, or 12.34%, to close at 258.47, the market continued to fall, arriving at an interim bottom on November 13, 1929, with the Dow closing at 198.60. The market then recovered for several months, starting on November 14, with the Dow gaining 18.59 points to close at 217.28, and reaching a secondary closing peak ( bear market rally) of 294.07 on April 17, 1930. The Dow then embarked on another, much longer, steady slide from April 1930 to July 8, 1932, when it closed at 41.22, its lowest level of the 20th century, concluding an 89.2% loss for the index in less than three years.

Beginning on March 15, 1933, and continuing through the rest of the 1930s, the Dow began to slowly regain the ground it had lost. The largest percentage increases of the Dow Jones occurred during the early and mid-1930s. In late 1937, there was a sharp dip in the stock market, but prices held well above the 1932 lows. The Dow Jones did not return to its peak close of September 3, 1929, for 25 years, until November 23, 1954.

In 1932, the Pecora Commission was established by the U.S. Senate to study the causes of the crash. The following year, the U.S. Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act mandating a separation between commercial banks, which take deposits and extend loans, and investment banks, which underwrite, issue, and distribute stocks, bonds, and other securities.

After, stock markets around the world instituted measures to suspend trading in the event of rapid declines, claiming that the measures would prevent such panic sales. However, the one-day crash of Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6%, as well as Black Monday of March 16, 2020 (−12.9%), were worse in percentage terms than any single day of the 1929 crash (although the combined 25% decline of October 28-29, 1929 was larger than that of October 19, 1987, and remains the worst two-day decline as of 10 March 2023).

The crash followed a speculative boom that had taken hold in the late 1920s. During the latter half of the 1920s, steel production, building construction, retail turnover, automobiles registered, and even railway receipts advanced from record to record. The combined net profits of 536 manufacturing and trading companies showed an increase, in the first six months of 1929, of 36.6% over 1928, itself a record half-year. Iron and steel led the way with doubled gains. Such figures set up a crescendo of stock-exchange speculation that led hundreds of thousands of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market. Many people were borrowing money to buy more stocks. By August 1929, brokers were routinely lending small investors more than two thirds of the face value of the stocks that they were buying. Over $8.5 billion was out on loan, more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the United States at the time.

The rising share prices encouraged more people to invest on the hope that share prices would rise further. Speculation thus fueled further rises and created an economic bubble. Because of margin buying, investors stood to lose large sums of money if the market turned down or even if it failed to advance quickly enough. The average price to earnings ratio of S&P Composite stocks was 32.6 in September 1929, clearly above historical norms. According to the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, the exuberance also resulted in a large number of people placing their savings and money in leverage investment products like Goldman Sachs's "Blue Ridge trust" and "Shenandoah Trust," which crashed in 1929 as well, resulting in losses to banks of $475 billion in 2010 dollars ($637.44 billion in 2022).

The British economist Sir George Paish predicted the May slump.

Good harvests had built up a mass of 250 million bushels of wheat to be "carried over" when 1929 opened. By May there was also a winter wheat crop of 560 million bushels ready for harvest in the Mississippi Valley. The oversupply caused such a drop in wheat prices that the net incomes of farmers from wheat were threatened with extinction. Stock markets are always sensitive to the future state of commodity markets, and the slump in Wall Street that had been predicted for May by Sir George Paish arrived on time. In June 1929, the position was saved by a severe drought in the Dakotas and the Canadian West, as well as unfavorable seed times in Argentina and eastern Australia. The oversupply was now wanted to fill the gaps in the 1929 world wheat production. From 97¢ per bushel in May, the price of wheat rose to $1.49 in July. When it was seen that figure would make American farmers get more for their crop that year than in 1928, stocks went up again.

In August, the wheat price fell when France and Italy were bragging about a magnificent harvest, and the situation in Australia improved. That sent a shiver through Wall Street and stock prices quickly dropped, but word of cheap stocks brought a fresh rush of "stags" (amateur speculators) and investors. Congress voted for a $100 million relief package for the farmers on the hope of stabilizing wheat prices, but by October, the price had fallen to $1.31 per bushel.

Other important economic barometers were also slowing or even falling by mid-1929, including car sales, house sales, and steel production. The falling commodity and industrial production may have dented even American self-confidence, and the stock market peaked on September 3 at 381.17 just after Labor Day, and it started to falter after Roger Babson issued his prescient "market crash" forecast. By the end of September, the market had dropped 10% from the peak (the "Babson Break"). Selling intensified in early and mid-October, with sharp down days punctuated by a few up days. Panic selling of massive proportion started the week of October 21 and intensified and culminated on October 24, October 28, and especially October 29 ("Black Tuesday").

The president of the Chase National Bank, Albert H. Wiggin, said at the time:

We are reaping the natural fruit of the orgy of speculation in which millions of people have indulged. It was inevitable, because of the tremendous increase in the number of stockholders in recent years, that the number of sellers would be greater than ever when the boom ended and selling took the place of buying.

United States

Crowd at New York's American Union Bank during a bank run early in the Great Depression

Together, the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression formed the largest financial crisis of the 20th century. The panic of October 1929 has come to serve as a symbol of the economic contraction that gripped the world during the next decade. The falls in share prices on October 24 and 29, 1929 were practically instantaneous in all financial markets, except Japan.

The Wall Street Crash had a major impact on the U.S. and world economy, and it has been the source of intense academic historical, economic, and political debate from its aftermath until the present day. Some people believed that abuses by utility holding companies contributed to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. Many people blamed the crash on commercial banks that were too eager to put deposits at risk on the stock market.

In 1930, 1,352 banks held more than $853 million in deposits; in 1931, one year later, 2,294 banks failed with nearly $1.7 billion in deposits. Many businesses failed (28,285 failures and a daily rate of 133 in 1931).

The 1929 crash brought the Roaring Twenties to a halt. As tentatively expressed by economic historian Charles P. Kindleberger, in 1929, there was no lender of last resort effectively present, which, if it had existed and been properly exercised, would have been key in shortening the business slowdown that normally follows financial crises. The crash instigated widespread and long-lasting consequences for the United States. Historians still debate whether the 1929 crash sparked the Great Depression or if it merely coincided with bursting a loose credit-inspired economic bubble. Only 16% of American households were invested in the stock market within the United States during the period leading up to this depression, suggesting that the crash carried somewhat less weight in causing it.

Unemployed men march in Toronto.

However, the psychological effects of the crash reverberated across the nation as businesses became aware of the difficulties in securing capital market investments for new projects and expansions. Business uncertainty naturally affects job security for employees, and as the American worker (the consumer) faced uncertainty with regards to income, naturally the propensity to consume declined. The decline in stock prices caused bankruptcies and severe macroeconomic difficulties, including contraction of credit, business closures, firing of workers, bank failures, decline of the money supply, and other economically depressing events.

The resultant rise of mass unemployment is seen as a result of the crash, although the crash is by no means the sole event that contributed to the depression. The Wall Street Crash is usually seen as having the greatest impact on the events that followed and therefore is widely regarded as signaling the downward economic slide that initiated the Great Depression. True or not, the consequences were dire for almost everybody. Most academic experts agree on one aspect of the crash: It wiped out billions of dollars of wealth in one day, and this immediately depressed consumer buying.

The failure set off a worldwide run on US gold deposits (i.e., the dollar) and forced the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates into the slump. Some 4,000 banks and other lenders ultimately failed. Also, the uptick rule, which allowed short selling only when the last tick in a stock's price was positive, was implemented after the 1929 market crash to prevent short sellers from driving the price of a stock down in a bear raid.

The stock market crash of October 1929 led directly to the Great Depression in Europe. When stocks plummeted on the New York Stock Exchange, the world noticed immediately. Although financial leaders in the United Kingdom, as in the United States, vastly underestimated the extent of the crisis that ensued, it soon became clear that the world's economies were more interconnected than ever. The effects of the disruption to the global system of financing, trade, and production and the subsequent meltdown of the American economy were soon felt throughout Europe.

In 1930 and 1931, in particular, unemployed workers went on strike, demonstrated in public, and otherwise took direct action to call public attention to their plight. Within the UK, protests often focused on the so-called means test, which the government had instituted in 1931 to limit the amount of unemployment payments made to individuals and families. For working people, the means test seemed an intrusive and insensitive way to deal with the chronic and relentless deprivation caused by the economic crisis. The strikes were met forcefully, with police breaking up protests, arresting demonstrators, and charging them with crimes related to the violation of public order.

There is a debate among economists and historians as to what role the crash played in subsequent economic, social, and political events. The Economist argued in a 1998 article that the Depression did not start with the stock market crash, nor was it clear at the time of the crash that a depression was starting. They asked, "Can a very serious Stock Exchange collapse produce a serious setback to industry when industrial production is for the most part in a healthy and balanced condition?" They argued that there must be some setback, but there was not yet sufficient evidence to prove that it would be long or would necessarily produce a general industrial depression.

However, The Economist also cautioned that some bank failures were also to be expected and some banks may not have had any reserves left for financing commercial and industrial enterprises. It concluded that the position of the banks was the key to the situation, but what was going to happen could not have been foreseen.

Milton Friedman's A Monetary History of the United States, co-written with Anna Schwartz, argues that what made the "great contraction" so severe was not the downturn in the business cycle, protectionism, or the 1929 stock market crash in themselves but the collapse of the banking system during three waves of panics from 1930 to 1933.

Bierman, Harold (2008). "The 1929 Stock Market Crash". In Whaples, Robert (ed.). EH.Net Encyclopedia. Santa Clara, California: Economic History Association.

Brooks, John (1969). Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920-1938. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0393013758

Galbraith, John Kenneth. "1929: New York City." Lapham's Quarterly, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 145-146

Klein, Maury (2001). Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195135164

Klingaman, William K. (1989). 1929: The Year of the Great Crash. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0060160810

Shachtman, Tom (1979). The Day America Crashed: A Narrative Account of the Great Stock Market Crash of October 24, 1929. New York: G.P. Putnam. ISBN 0399116133.

Thomas, Gordon and Morgan-Witts, Max (1979). The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0385143702

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The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, the Crash of 29 was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended in mid-November, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) collapsed.

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The Great Depression (1929–1939) was an economic shock that affected most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States.[1] The economic contagion began around September 1929 and led to the Wall Street stock market crash of 24 October (Black Thursday). It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century.[2]

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1932- FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover opens the FBI Laboratory

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1932- FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover opens the FBI Laboratory

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The crime lab that is now referred to as the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory officially opens in Washington, D.C., on November 24, 1932.

The lab, which was chosen because it had the necessary sink, operated out of a single room and had only one full-time employee, Agent Charles Appel. Agent Appel began with a borrowed microscope and a pseudo-scientific device called a helixometer. The helixometer purportedly assisted investigators with gun barrel examinations, but it was actually more for show than function. In fact, J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, provided the lab with very few resources and used the "cutting-edge lab" primarily as a public relations tool. But by 1938, the FBI lab added polygraph machines and started conducting controversial lie detection tests as part of its investigations.

In its early days, the FBI Crime Lab worked on about 200 pieces of evidence a year. By the 1990s, that number multiplied to approximately 200,000. Currently, the FBI Crime Lab obtains 600 new pieces of criminal evidence everyday.

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The FBI Crime Lab opens its doors for business

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The crime lab that is now referred to as the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory officially opens in Washington, D.C., on November 24, 1932. The lab, which was chosen because it had the necessary sink, operated out of a single room and had only one full-time employee, Agent Charles Appel.

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1984 – Sir Alec Jeffries introduced DNA Technology

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1984 – Sir Alec Jeffries introduced DNA Technology

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Alec Jeffreys at work in his Leicester University lab in 1985.
Scientist Alec Jeffreys (now Sir Alec Jeffreys) was at work in his lab at Leicester University, England, in September 1984, when something astounding happened - he accidentally discovered what he called "DNA fingerprinting", and a whole new world was opened up.
This was a one-off, stand alone, out-of-the-blue discovery which was to have an amazing impact on the world. It was totally unexpected and unsought for.
In the late summer of1984, Jeffreys was working on a project to study how inherited illnesses pass through families. The project failed.
But the result, although not what Jeffreys had envisaged or even imagined in his wildest dreams, was absolutely stunning.
Says Jeffreys: "I was on my own in th e darkroom at 9.05 on September 10, 1984, when that pattern came up and I twigged what we had stumbled upon. Just that single bit of X-ray film threw open a door we didn't even know was there. It opened the whole science of forensic DNA.

"My first reaction was that the results were really yucky-looking and complicated. It took about thirty seconds for the penny to drop. I came rushing out of the darkroom. The first person I saw was Vicky Wilson, my technician. 'Hey, we are on to something exciting here,' I told her. We started coming on to all sorts of crazy ideas. I was running round the lab with a needle, pricking myself and spotting blood drops around, because at that point we didn't even know if DNA would survive in a forensic-type specimen.

"It was a 100 per cent accident. Science tends to be a slow, plodding discipline: two steps forward, one step back. To get a 'Eureka!' moment like that, when suddenly an entire new field opens up, is really rare. Most scientists will go their whole lives never experiencing it.
"In those early days you wouldn't have hung a dog on the quality of the DNA fingerprints we were able to produce, but within a few months we were getting much richer patterns. The most sensible thing I did was to call it 'DNA fingerprinting', if we'd given it a more technical or scientific name I'm sure it would have taken much longer for anyone to take any notice.

In recent years, Sir Alec Jeffreys has called himself 'a bit of a beardy-weirdy in the mid-80s'. But, even if it were true, he was so much more than that!

"The following year a lawyer read a piece on our research and contacted us because he thought we might be able to help with an immigration case. The son of a family living in London had gone back to Ghana and when he tried to return ten years later his British passport had expired and the authorities were convinced that another family member was trying to get in under his name.

"Through his DNA analysis we proved that he was telling the truth and to this day it is my proudest case."
Colin Pitchfork was arrested for the rape and murder of two teenage girls after the first "DNA manhunt" in 1987.
In the 21st Century, forensic DNA is an accepted and trusted tool - it has revolutionised crime scene investigations, led to the convictions of murderers and rapists, and transformed immigration disputes and paternity cases.
And just think - it all began, totally unexpectedly, in Sir Alec Jeffreys' Leicester lab on that fateful morning in 1984...

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1984: Sir Alec Jeffreys And A "Eureka!" Moment - The Discovery Of DNA Fingerprinting...

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Alec Jeffreys at work in his Leicester University lab in 1985. Scientist Alec Jeffreys (now Sir Alec Jeffreys) was at work in his lab at Leicester University, England, in September 1984, when something astounding happened - he accidentally discovered what he called "DNA fingerprinting", and a whole new world was opened up.