On this day in 1849, the New York City Board of Health establishes a hospital to deal with a cholera epidemic that, before it ends, kills more than 5,000 people. The rapidly growing city was ripe for an epidemic of this kind because of poor health...

On May 14th, 1948, three-year-old June Devaney, recovering from pneumonia at Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn, England, is kidnapped from her bed. Nurses discovered her missing at 1:20 a.m. the next day, and police were immediately summoned to...

On May 11th, 1949, the body of Leon Besnard is exhumed in Loudun, France, by authorities searching for evidence of poison. For years, local residents had been suspicious of his wife Marie, as they watched nearly her entire family die untimely and...

The Ohio State Penitentiary was built in Columbus in 1834. It had a poor reputation throughout its history. A cholera epidemic swept through the facility in 1849, killing 121 convicts. In 1893, a prison superintendent wrote that Ten thousand pages of...

On April 24th, 1922 Colin Ross was hanged to death in Australia for the rape and murder of 13-year-old Alma Tirtschke. Ross was one of the first criminals in Australia to be convicted based on forensic evidence. On December 30, 1921, Tirtschke was...