Forensic science started coming into its own by the early 20th century. Fingerprints were discovered – and used successfully in courts. Polygraph machines would soon follow. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and other senior leaders wanted to include those abilities in the bureau’s investigation techniques. Hoover emphasized their job would be pure scientific evidence collection, without the overlaying purpose of securing convictions. But even so, his push for the bureau in that direction had profound effects.

On this day, November 24, in 1932, the FBI laboratory to investigate scientific evidence of crime officially opened. There was no fixed date for its actual start of operations; it had been assembled over the course of several months. But November 24 was chosen as the official day.

The laboratory’s first case was the mysterious poisoning by chocolate of a patient in a Pennsylvania veterans’ hospital. As the crime took place on a federal facility, the FBI investigated, matching the typing on the included card to the home of the patient’s sister. Confronted with the evidence, she duly confessed; the first success of many of a lab that would soon give police and law enforcement the ability to go after much bigger criminals.