Whilst we all know the basic things about tattoos, who doesn’t love a good fact or interesting story?

So here we have it, 5 amazing Need-To-Know things!

Starting off with a right corker!

1. Urine in tattoos

That’s right, you read it correctly. It’s believed that Russian Prison Tattooists would mix urine in with the ink (from a ballpoint pen). The idea behind this was that Urine carried a type of antiseptic quality that would help the tattoo heal. This explains why their tattoos often have a slight blue-y tinge to them! – Think I’ll pass on giving that one a go.

2. Tattoo therapy

One of the oldest known tattooed bodies was that of Otzi the Iceman. Discovered in  1991, beneath an alpine glacier along the Italian-Austrian border. His 5,300 year old body was found with whopping 61 tattoos. The tattoos mainly consist of dots and lines, most of them covering parts of his body where he had suffered joint and muscle issues.This led scientists to believe the tattoos were a type of therapy. – How incredible that they were performing therapy techniques back then too.

3. Two and a half day tattoo

On the 7th August 2022 Giovanni Vassallo, an Italian tattoo artist completed the   Guinness world record for the longest tattoo session. He started on the 5th August at 10am and finished on the 7th August at 23:37pm. That was a total of 61 hours and 37 minutes. – Whilst that’s an incredible achievement I think the client also deserves a round of applause for not tapping out on that one!

4. First prosthetic tattoo machine arm

Tattoo artist JC Sheitan Tenet lost his arm in an accident back when he was just 10 years old. He had always dreamed of becoming a tattoo artist, but didn’t let that setback stop him. He taught himself how to draw with his left hand and pushed to achieve his goal, he eventually started tattooing with his left hand as well. After meeting artist JL Gonzal at a tattoo convention they discussed ways he could someday tattoo with his right hand. JL Gonzal then created the perfect prosthetic tattoo machine arm for JC Sheitan allowing him to tattoo from his right arm! – I thought spider man had cool web shooting powers but this is by far the coolest talent.

5. National Leaders

Back in Soviet Russia it was illegal to shoot at pictures of their national leaders. Therefore some prisoners would get pictures of Stalin and Lenin on themselves so if they were ever sentenced to death the guards wouldn’t be able to shoot at them! – Whilst a pretty gnarly subject, the ideology of it definitely works.