World Fingerprint Day

Every September 1 is celebrated as World Fingerprint Day in honor of Juan Vucetich, an Argentine anthropologist and naturalized police officer of Croatian origin who developed a classification of fingerprints and created the world's first fingerprint cards. This system began as a police tool that has now been extended both to preserve personal data and for everyday use, such as unlocking cell phones.

Vucetich created four major groups to classify the features of a fingerprint: arches, internal loops, external loops and whorls. Thanks to his method and the creation of fingerprint cards, the Buenos Aires police were able to identify in 1892 the murderer Francisca Rojas, a woman from the city of Necochea. Rojas had killed her three children and framed her husband, but at the crime scene a bloody thumbprint was found, evidence that gave her away and showed the world the usefulness and veracity of dactyloscopy as an effective method for forensic activities.