Enlarge / Two recovered and restored portraits of 19th century Portuguese physician Vicente Urbino de Freitas, suspected of poisoning several of his wife’s family members in the particular “Crime of Flores Street”—Portugal’s first major forensic case. (credit: Ricardo Jorge Dinis-Oliveira, 2019) On January 2, 1890, a Portuguese man named Jose Antonio Sampaio, Jr., died in […]
Enlarge (credit: Saleem and Hawass 2021) CT scans of a mummified Egyptian pharaoh, once suspected to be the victim of a palace assassination, suggest that he was actually executed after being captured in battle in the mid-16th century BCE. Pharaoh Seqenenre led his army from Upper Egypt in the 1550s BCE to face the Hyksos, […]
Enlarge / Ophelia (1852) by John Everett Millais, inspired by the character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who goes mad and drowns in a brook. It can be challenging for forensic scientists to determine how long a dead body has been submerged in water. There’s rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our […]
Medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris hosts the Smithsonian Channel’s new documentary show The Curious Death and Life of…. Infamous historic cold cases receive a scientific face-lift at The Curious Death and Life Of…, a brand new documentary series in the Smithsonian Channel. Hosted by writer and medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris, every one of those six episodes […]