The Model Ship Blog

10 Strange & Interesting Facts About Tattoos

Posted by Lily Rose

Tattoos are a never-ending topic of conversation. Here are 10 surprising and little known facts about this fascinating subject.

The most tattooed person ever was Tom Leppard from the Isle of Skye, Scotland. He has 99.9 per cent of his body covered with a leopard-skin design. Guinness World Records states that the only parts of Tom’s body that were not tattooed were the skin between his toes and the insides of his ears.

American Julia Gnuse and Canadian Krystyne Kolorful share the title for the world’s most tattooed women. Both have 95 per cent of their bodies tattooed. Julia began to tattoo her body in order to disguise the effects of porphyria, a disease which can leave skin permanently scarred. No one knows why Krystyne chose this weird way to accessorize her body.

The oldest known tattoos were found in October 1991. A 5,000-year-old frozen body of a Bronze Age hunter was found between Austria and Italy. The body was named Ozti the Iceman and was found in a glacier. It was so well preserved that scientists were able to make out a number of tattoos including a cross on the inside of the left knee, six straight lines 15cm above the kidneys and a series of parallel lines on the ankles. This was one very cool ancient dude!

King Harold II of England was known to have many tattoos. After his death at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, his tattoos were used to identify his body. He is mor famous today for his tattoos than his heroics in battle!

American George C. Reiger Jr. boasts over 1,000 tattoos based on Disney characters. His tattoos include all 101 Dalmatians. Because the characters are copyrighted, Reiger had to seek permission from Disney and now claims to be the only person in the world with such authorization. He received the permission on the condition that he not appear in a tattooing magazine, go to a tattoo parlors or make money in any way from his tattoos. This was one colorful and determined guy!

To make tattoos in the early days, urine was mixed the colouring matter such as vegetable dyes to make the tattoos.

The invention of the first tattoo maching used the design of the doorbell. Amazing…but true.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was very fashionable for aristocrats, both men and women, to be tattooed. At that time tattooing was very expensive and people paid huge sums of money for their designs. Later the costs were reduced and tattooing was adopted by the lower classes. That’s when the practice fell out of favour with the social elite and they went on to even more expensive ways to decorate their bodies.

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