Tattoos are no longer something we associate with subcultures or deviance. More and more people (especially young people) are getting tattoos, so much so that the number of folks with at least one tattoo has almost doubled in the last five years. 

Although statistics vary, with some sources claiming that 40% of Americans have ink on their skin and other surveys showing it's only 32%, the trend is still there. Tattoos are experiencing an unprecedented boom in popularity since the number of inked Americans in 2019 was only 21%.

We might think that tattoos are a fairly new development in our society, but non-Western cultures have been inking their skin for thousands of years. Dr. David Lane, the author of The Other End of the Needle: Continuity and Change among Tattoo Workers, told Byrdie that the oldest human remains we have recovered have tattoos on them.

For the longest time, we thought Egyptians were the earliest tattoo artists. But, in 1991, archaeologists recovered a 5,300-year-old mummy near the Austrian-Italian border that had many tattoos. Most Egyptian female mummies with ink on their skin were from around 4,000 years ago, making the Italian-Austrian Otzi the Iceman, the oldest inked person that we know of.

The word "tattoo" comes from the Polynesian culture. When Europeans arrived there in the 18th century, they mispronounced the Samoan word "Tatau" and wrote it down as "tattoo." "Tatau" actually means "to strike" because the traditional method of tattooing there is hand-tapping.

The most tattooed living person in the world is from New Zealand. It's the performance artist and street performer Gregory Paul McLaren. He had his first tattoo when he was 16, his second one at 18, and after that, he got tattooed regularly "as much as he could." As Lucky (that's his stage name) jokes, he has one tattoo, the biggest in the world. But in some places on his body, he actually has three or four layers of ink.

Did you know that Winston Churchill was possibly inked as well? Some sources claim that he got a tattoo of an anchor after his military service. But others say it's just an attempt to make him more rebellious and relatable to the masses, much like his mother, who, as an aristocrat, supposedly had an ouroboros tattooed on her wrist. There is no physical evidence of these tattoos, so, historians are skeptical.

Do you know another unlikely person to have had a tattoo? Thomas Edison! He had a quincunx tattoo: four dots arranged in a square or, in other words, how the number five appears on a dice cube. But Edison didn't invent the tattoo pen; it was Samuel O'Reilly in 1891. Edison did, however, invent the electric pen that later evolved into the tattoo pen.

One of the most common concerns for many tattoo owners is how to keep them looking fresh and vibrant for as long as possible. People like to say that tattoos "fade" into the skin, but the reality is a bit more morbid. Our immune cells, called macrophages, gradually eat the ink and disperse it. So slather that SPF and moisturizer on your tattoos as much as you can to prevent them from aging poorly!

Some 60 years ago, there was a ban on tattoos in New York City. In 1961, lawmakers deemed tattooing unlawful, and it wouldn't be until 36 years later that people could get tattooed in NYC again. The main reasons were health concerns (hepatitis and other infections) and the city trying to improve its reputation, since many associated tattoos with criminality.

Yet, back in the day, tattoos weren't always for the criminals and the outcasts. In the late 1800s, there was a tattoo shop for London's elite on Jermyn Street in a high-end fashion district. He supposedly had many celebrity and influential clients, among whom were Queen Victoria's sons and the kings of Norway and Denmark.