Tat Talk

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

The world’s most tattooed person is Tom Leppard from the Isle of Skye, Scotland . Guinness World Records says that the only parts of Tom’s body that are not tattooed are the skin inside of his ears and between his toes. He has 99.9 per cent of his body covered with a design that looks like leopard skin.

Canadian Krystyne Kolorful and American Julia Gnuse are women who share the title for the world’s most tattooed woman. 95 per cent of the bodies of both women are tattooed. Julia began to tattoo her body in order to disguise the effects of porphyria, a disease which can leave skin permanently scarred.

In October 1991 a 5,000-year-old frozen body of a Bronze Age hunter was found between Austria and Italy. The body, nicknamed Ozti the iceman, was found in a glacier and was so well preserved that scientists were able to make out a number of tattoos. These included a cross on the inside of the left knee, six straight lines 15 cm above the kidneys and a series of parallel lines on the ankles. This was one hip ancient guy!

King Harold II of England was famous for many things including his many tattoos. His tattoos were used to identify his body after his death at the Battle of Hastings in 1066…he may never have been famous if he had not been tattooed!

American George C. Reiger Jr. boasts over 1,000 tattoos based on Disney characters. Include are all 101 Dalmatians. Because the characters are copyrighted, Reiger has had to seek permission from Disney to obtain his tattoos and he claims now that he is the only person in the world with this authorization. The permission was granted on the condition that he not make money from his tattoos, go to a tattoo parlor or appear in a tattooing magazines.

Early tattoo artists used urine mixed with different colouring matter to make their tattoos. Creepy…but it worked!

The design of the doorbell was used to make the original tattoo machine. It is incredible what motivates inventors.

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.