Tattoo Facts

Did you know that the word “tattoo” can be traced back to the Polynesian noun tatau, which means “puncture, mark made on skin”?

 

The red star which is incorporated into the Macy's logo is a part of the tattoo of its founder, R.H. Macy. Macy got the ink while working on a whaling ship in his adolescence.  

 

For the Ainu women in Japan, tattoos of giant-sized lips on their faces were customary. Lip tattooing was seen as a mark of maturity and believed to repel evil spirits.

 

 

 

Samuel F. O’Reilley patented the first tattoo machine in 1891. It was actually a modification of a machine designed for autographic printing, first patented by Thomas Alva Edison in 1876.

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 Skin can be pierced between 50 and 3,000 times per minute depending on the size of the design and colors used in the tattoo.

 

 A tattoo parlor called Little Vinnie’s Tattoos in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is well known among female breast cancer survivors. Vinnie is famously called the “Michelangelo of N***** Tattoos,” as he expertly crafts detailed areolas on women after they have had mastectomies.

 

 

While filming “xXx,” actor Vin Diesel had a fake tattoo – the name Melkor – on his stomach. It was revealed that it was the name of Diesel’s character on a game of which he was a big fan, Dungeons & Dragons.

 

Fifty years ago, tattoos were the watermark of rebels and social outcasts—bikers, sailors, carnival freaks. But today, your average sorority girl probably has a unicorn on her ankle or a butterfly fluttering above her butt crack.

 

 In Massachusetts, tattooing was illegal all the way up until 2000, with severe penalties including possible ail sentences. Today, all states allow tattooing, although the rule for minors vary from state to state—some allow kids to get inked with parental permission while others require waiting until 18, no exceptions.

 

 For those not bold enough to commit to permanent inking, there are alternatives.Small children adore the temporary tattoos that come in the machines in supermarkets, and at carnivals, boardwalks, and the like, you can often encounter booths providing henna tattoos. Derived from a plant, henna dye has been used for thousands of years, both to color the hair and to draw intricate designs on the skin. Natural henna goes on with a light orange color and darkens to a rust red over a few days. As the skin exfoliates, the patterns gently fade away.However, the commonly used “black henna,” contains synthetic ingredients, most notably p-phenylenediamine (PPD). PPD is found in coal tar and has been known to cause horrifying reactions and permanent scars.

 

 

 

 

 While many people get tattoos based entirely on drunken whimsy, others are deadly serious about it, their body art fraught with meaning and symbolism. This is especially true of gang members, including those behind bars.