The Brighter 5: Five funny jokes to celebrate National Tattoo Day with a laugh

[July 16, 2021: Josh Shavit]

Tattooing is the art of inserting pigment under the dermis layer of the skin to create a decorative, symbolic, or pictorial design, and on National Tattoo Day, July 17, we set time aside to learn more about the tattooing process and its societal importance and history. If you don’t have a tattoo, you’re likely to know someone who does, and if you’ve asked them how they knew at the time when they were getting inked whether they would still want that design on their skin years or decades later, you may have just gotten a peculiar look instead of an explanation.

National Tattoo Day has only been celebrated for the past few years, but the art of tattooing has been around for millennia. Archaeological evidence shows that the ancient Egyptians practiced tattooing and the ‘Iceman,’ or Ötzi, the natural mummy discovered in glacial ice in the Alps in 1991 and carbon-dated at 3250 B.C., bore 61 tattoos. Ancient tattooing was most widely practiced among the Austronesian-speaking peoples as far back as 1500 B.C.

The first tattoo shop to open in the U.S. belonged to Martin Hildebrandt, who started his business in New York City in 1846 and was sought after by Union and Confederate soldiers alike. By 1975, there were still only 40 tattoo artists operating in the U.S., but by 1980 that number had ballooned to 5,000. Today, tattoo shops are in every city and medium-sized town in the country, and on July 17, we honor their proprietors’ contribution to American culture.

Below are today's 5 funny tattoo-themed jokes to get you into a happy place.

Geek Tattoo

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