31 March: Fingerprints

On this date in 1892 the world’s first fingerprinting bureau was formally opened by the Buenos Aires Chief of Police. 10 things you might not know about fingerprints:

1. Fingerprints form in the womb, at about week 10-15 of pregnancy. Scientists believe fingerprints form when the bottom layer of the epidermis grows at a different rate to the rest of the skin. The patterns are based on our movement, location in the womb and composition of our mother’s amniotic fluid. Hence even identical Twins have different fingerprints, although there can be a genetic propensity towards one of the three types of pattern.
2. Which are loops, whorls and arches. Loops are the most common; about 60% of fingerprints are loops. Arches are the rarest with only 5% of fingerprints having this pattern.
3. It’s possible, though rare, for people to have no fingerprints at all. There are a small number of genetic conditions, including Adermatoglyphia, in which a child is born with no fingerprints. It’s sometimes referred to as “immigration delay disease,” for the trouble it causes people trying to cross borders. There are only four families in the entire world who are affected by this condition. Fingerprints can be eroded or erased by rough tactile work, chemotherapy or even “a good case of poison ivy”. Unless there’s permanent tissue damage, they’ll regenerate. When fingerprinting first became a common means to solve crimes, some gangsters, like John Dillinger, went to great and probably very painful efforts to remove them. Dillingner burned his prints off with acid. While he was never convicted using fingerprint evidence, after his death the faint traces of his former ridges and whorls could still be seen.
4. Is there an evolutionary reason for fingerprints? Perhaps. They help us grip things without our hands sliding off, and might be advantageous to the sense of touch. It could be that they helped our tree dwelling ancestors hold on to branches. That could be why the other animals which have them tend to be tree dwellers, too. Our cousins the Gorillas and chimpanzees have them. So do Koalas. In fact, koala fingerprints are so similar to ours that they could confuse police in Australia. (The koala did it!)
5. The world’s oldest fingerprint was discovered in Kuwait on a piece of broken clay pot dating from the Stone Age. The print is 7,300 years old.
6. While Argentina was using fingerprint evidence from 1892, the first legal conviction based on fingerprint evidence in the USA didn’t occur until 1910. A burglar who shot the owner of the house he broke into left his prints on a newly painted bannister. The UK was slightly ahead of the game with the first conviction occurring in 1902. The perp in this case hadn’t committed a murder; he’d merely stolen some billiard balls.
7. The scientific name for fingerprints is 'dermatoglyph' from the Greek derma (skin) and glyph (sculpted).
8. In 1948, British police fingerprinted the entire male population of the town of Blackburn in an attempt to find out who had killed a three year old child. The perpetrator had left his fingerprints on a glass bottle but they didn’t match anything the Blackburn police had on record. Anyone who refused was leaned on by the police and it was one of these people who turned out to be the killer.
9. The Great Train Robbery gang were caught because they played Monopoly with the money they’d stolen while in hiding. They left their prints on the Monopoly board at Leatherslade Farm.
10. It’s possible now to use fingerprints to tell if a person has been using drugs. The technology can detect the presence of a number of illegal drugs, including opiates, cocaine and cannabis from just one fingerprint sample. It’s quick and easier than collecting blood, urine or saliva. It even works on dead bodies so it can be quickly determined whether drugs were a factor in a person’s death.

Character Birthday

Atom Axe: a solo villain who lost his arm in a fight with Blackblade. Dr. Chaos of the Infra League grafted a replacement limb onto Atom Axe, a bionic arm in the form of an axe, and gave him various other defensive mechanisms and powers such as flight. Chaos had hoped Atom Axe would join his team, but he wasn’t one for co-operating with others and walked away, enraging Chaos. Atom Axe is cold and calculating and the epitome of the "mad axe man". His goal is revenge upon Blackblade for severing his arm.