Yawn

A yawn is deep involuntary breath from drowsiness, lack of stimulation or boredom. The reflex consisting of the simultaneous inhalation of air and the stretching of the eardrums, followed by an exhalation of breath.

Pixiebay

HUMAN YAWNING

Yawning (oscitation) most often occurs in adults immediately before and after sleep, during tedious activities and as a result of its contagious quality.

Yawning doesn't always necessarily mean you're tired, it also means your body needs more oxygen.

When you yawn, you take in three times more oxygen than you do in a normal breath.

Two women ironing, one with a yawn, by Edgar Degas

Describing how he begins his day, Benito Mussolini said in 1927: "My sleep is like that of a babe. It is profound, undisturbed and therefore extremely reposeful. I instinctively stretch and yawn when I wake, and, as quick as a flash, I am out of bed. My day has begun. I never stay in bed a moment after the yawn."

Yawning and stretching at the same time is called "pandiculating." It's very important in waking up our nervous system.

If you touch your tongue while yawning, it can stop the yawn.

Psychopaths aren't affected by the contagiousness of yawning.

People with autism are less likely to catch yawns. The more severe their condition, the less common the behavior gets.

ANIMAL YAWNING

An animal’s yawn based on how large their brain is. The bigger the brain, the longer they will yawn.
Dogs will yawn in order to express that there is a conflict of interest between their own ideas or desires and those of their owners.

Human yawns are contagious to dogs.

Cats both yawn and stretch, though not necessarily at the same time.

Pixiebay

Some animals yawn as a warning signal. Baboons, for instance, yawn to threaten their enemies, possibly by displaying large canine teeth.

Snakes yawn regularly as a way of realigning their jaws or adjusting their bite after they've swallowed a large meal.

The only non-mammal animal that is affected by the contagiousness of yawning is the parakeet.

Wool

Wool is the natural fibrous covering of the sheep, and also of the llama, angora goat, and other animals. The domestic sheep provides the great bulk of the fibres used in commerce.

Pixiebay

HISTORY

Human beings had been keeping sheep for 7,000 years before it occurred to anyone to use their wool.

One of the laws given to Moses and the Hebrews by God was that clothes of wool and linen must not be mixed. This may seem strange, but it is connected to the old fertility cult, which was widespread in the area they are conquering. The pagans believed that by mixing such things they were producing fertility. But this is just a superstition, God gives fertility and he is against superstition.

The Romans brought sheep into Spain, where long centuries of breeding produced the Merino sheep, which today produces most of the world's finest wool. The Romans also brought the craft of wool manufacture to Britain.

Women in Roman cities were encouraged to occupy their time working with wool. Their task was synonymous with being a virtuous wife and mother. In fact the Emperor Augustus was so eager to re-establish traditional Roman values that he wore woolen clothes made by his wife to encourage women to return to their looms.

The medieval English wool trade was one of the most important factors in the medieval British economy. By 1000 toll-records show German merchants buying raw wool in London.

In the mid-12th century, English wool trade was primarily with Flanders (where wool was made into cloth, primarily for sale via the Champagne fairs into the Mediterranean basin). German and Flemish merchants formed a London association (Hanse) and toured the English countryside for supplies of raw wool.

English Sheep, shown here in in 1240s or 1250s

Edward I of England's frequent military campaigns put a great financial strain on the nation. The king was granted a half-mark (6s 8d) customs duty per sack on the export of wool by the Parliament of 1275. But more money needed to be raised and an unpopular additional duty on wool, dubbed the maltolt or "bad tax" (in Norman-French) was levied between 1294-7.

"Ba, Ba Black sheep" is traditionally believed to refer to the 1275 wool tax. In the nursery rhyme, the black sheep admits to having three bags of wool which will be divided between "the master, "the dame" and "the little boy" (the little boy presumably being the taxman).

The English textile trade grew during the 15th century, to the point where export of wool was discouraged. The smuggling of wool out of the country, known as owling, was at one time punishable by the cutting off of a hand.

Half the population of Calais in the fifteenth century worked for the British wool trade. (Calais was an English possession at the time).

William Shakespeare's father, John, who was prosperous at the time of William's birth, was prosecuted for participating in the black market in wool.

In the 16th century, England invited wool craftsmen from other countries to settle there, and for a time the country became the world's leading wool-textile producer. However, the quality of English wools was in decline, perhaps partly due to a switch in focus to meat production for domestic urban markets, and European supremacy in the production of fine-wool passed to the Iberian peninsula and its Merino sheep.

One of the earliest depictions of a Merino sheep was El Buen Pastor (The Good Shepherd) by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, ca. 1650 (see below)

A 1571 Statute in England ordered the wearing of a "cap of wool knit" to be worn by everybody over six years of age during holidays. This was to help out the ailing wool trade.

Sheep were brought to America by Spanish conquistador and explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in 1540.

Early American settlers brought sheep to Jamestown in Virginia, and wove their own woolens, called homespuns.

George Washington was one of the first American scientific farmers. He improved his breed of sheep and obtained more than double the average yield of wool.

In 1797 the Merino sheep was introduced into Australia, which has become the world's largest producer of Merino wool: South Africa and South America are also large producers.

A World War I-era poster sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture encouraged children to raise sheep to provide needed war supplies. (see below)

Since World War II blendings of wool with synthetic fibres have been developed.

FUN WOOL FACTS

In Britain there are today some 26 breeds of sheep, and the wool is classified as lustre.

Wools from crossbred sheep (usually a cross of one of the lustre class with a merino) are produced in New Zealand.

Wool absorbs and releases water vapour as humidity rises and falls, which is why it works so well as a natural insulator.

The word jersey originally meant any knitted item make from Jersey wool, especially stockings.

Peruvian alpaca wool comes in 22 natural colors, the most of any wool-producing animal.

Asbestos was originally believed to be the wool of the salamander.

Sources Daily Express, Compton's Encyclopedia

Whiskers

A vibrissae, or whisker is a long bristle around the mouth of some animals, mostly mammals, that are specialised for tactile sensing.

Cat's whiskers. By Emelie Schäfer from The Netherlands 

Some animals, such as cats, also have whiskers above their eyes and on the backs of their legs.

Humans and anteaters are the only two mammals known not to sport any vibrissae, or whiskers that act as organs of touch.

In medicine, the term vibrissae also refers to the thick hairs found inside human nostrils.

Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an odd number of whiskers.

No two lions have the same whisker pattern.

A walrus' whiskers are 40 times thicker than human hair.

The length of a chinchilla's whiskers can be more than a third of its body length.

A chinchilla with large macrovibrissae. By © Salix /

Cats use their whiskers to gauge whether they can fit through an opening.

Cats often avoid consuming food or water from sides of their bowls to prevent 'whisker fatigue.' Whiskers brushing against a bowl can trigger sensory overload, causing them pain and stress whenever eating or drinking.

Hamsters are near-sighted and color blind. In order to compensate, they use their whiskers and their sense of smell to navigate.

Deprived of sight and hearing, seals can still accurately pinpoint the locations of fish because they have 1,500 nerve endings in their whiskers.

A mouse's whiskers can detect temperature changes as well as help it feel its way about.

Urine

HUMAN URINE

Cato the Elder, a Roman senator and historian, died in 149 BC. He recommended everyone bathing in the urine of those who ate cabbage, so that ‘they will never be weakly'. It worked for him: he lived to the ripe old age of 85.

Urine contains high levels of ammonia, which breaks down grease and organic fats. Roman emperor Vespasian levied a tax on urine in the 1st century AD. Urine at that time was collected at public toilets and used as a source of ammonia for bleaching togas and laundering garments.

Before blood glucose tests were available, doctors would taste the urine of their patients to diagnose diabetes. A sweet taste meant the patient was diabetic.

A Doctor Examining Urine. Trophime Bigot.

Hennig Brand, a German alchemist in the 1660s, was convinced he could distill gold from human urine. After amassing 1,500 gallons of urine and boiling it, he discovered the element phosphorus.

In the 19th century anti urination devices were built against sides of buildings. They were shaped such that anyone urinating there needed to stand away from the wall in public view. The slope of them meant that if anyone still tried to do so, the urine would be deflected back onto their feet and legs.

John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, spotted a cloud of strange glowing "fireflies" on his second orbit. Later NASA confirmed that the fireflies were simply droplets of his own urine that had been expelled from his craft during his previous orbit.

The first man to urinate on the moon was Buzz Aldrin, shortly after stepping onto the lunar surface.

Urine comes from your blood, not directly from your digestive system.

"Latchkey Incontinence" is a phenomenon where the urge to urinate gets stronger the closer you are to a bathroom. One example would be when you put your key in your front door when returning home from work.

7% of men suffer from paruresis, an anxiety disorder that means they can't pee if other people are in close proximity.

Males and females finish urination differently. Specifically, males contract a muscle called the bulbospongiosus several times to empty the urethra, whereas the female urethra is emptied by gravity, and females do not use this muscle to 'squeeze' out the urine like males do.

When you urinate, a small amount of urine enters your mouth through the saliva glands.

A healthy adult bladder can hold one pint of urine.

3,079 chemical compounds have been identified in human urine.

Fresh urine. By SuSanA Secretariat - https://www.flickr.com

The army field manual list urine as a 'Do Not Consume,' even under survival conditions.

Urine reacts with chlorine to create trichloramine, which is linked to serious respiratory problems like asthma — so don't pee in the swimming pool.

ANIMAL URINE

The law of urination states that all mammals take roughly 21 seconds to empty their bladders regardless of size. An African elephant will empty its 42 gallon bladder in nearly the same time that a Great Dane dog will empty its 0.4 gallon bladder.

Camel urine is as thick as syrup.

A male lobster’s bladder is located in it’s head - When two males fight, they squirt each other in the face with urine.

The maned wolf's urine smells so much like marijuana it caused police at the Rotterdam Zoo to go on the hunt for cannabis smokers.

Tooth

The tooth in vertebrates is a hard structure in the mouth, used for biting, crushing or tearing at food, and in defense and aggression.

In humans the first set, the milk teeth, appear from age six months to two-and-a-half years, and number 20.

The permanent dentition starts from the sixth year onwards. Adult humans have 32 teeth of three different-types (incisors, canines and molars).

Pixiebay

HISTORY

Our hunter-gatherers ancestors had much better dental health than us. Cavemen had relatively straight teeth and crooked teeth are a modern phenomenon.

The ancient Chinese, Egyptians and Mayans all experimented with artificial teeth screwed into the jawbone, but modern implants began in 1965. 

The phrase "By the skin of my teeth" comes from the Bible verse Job 19:20, in which Job states, "I am escaped with the skin of my teeth."

Medieval peasants had reasonably healthy teeth, which didn't deteriorate much because there was no sugar in their diet. Also there was a lot of grit in the bread they ate, which ground their teeth very flat. 

Muslims generally had better teeth than the Europeans because their religion told them to keep them clean. They achieved this by using a type of chewstick called a Siwak stick.

Queen Elizabeth I's teeth were turned black in her old age through eating too many sweet things. In fact black teeth were a status symbol in Elizabethan times as sugar was very expensive, costing nine times as much as milk.

In 1615 an early tooth whitening product was advertised in England. A sage and salt scrub was recommended to 'English huswives' as a way to achieve gleaming white teeth.

By the 18th century in Britain poor teeth was rife. Georgian women sometimes wore second hand teeth, fashioned into dentures, sold to them by the poor.

The Stanford Daily reported on April 12, 1928 that Mathias Blau of Chicago convinced his wife to have all her teeth pulled. He then refused to buy her dentures because it was "cheaper to feed her soup than solid food." Mrs Blau took him to court and her husband was told to get her two new sets of teeth and at least a beef steak a week. 

Fluoridation of water was introduced in the USA to prevent tooth decay in 1945. Experiments have indicated that a concentration of fluoride salts of 1 part per million in tap water reduces by over half the decay of children's teeth.

British Columbia woodsman Francis Wharton shot a deer in the late 1960s but had no serviceable teeth with which to eat it so he fashioned dentures out of the deer's own teeth. 

HUMAN TEETH

Though your teeth are considered part of your skeletal system they are not in fact considered bones. 

Diagram of a healthy human molar. By KDS4444 

Tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the human body. It's composed of mineralized calcium phosphate, which is the single hardest substance any living being can produce. Your tooth enamel is harder than a lobster's shell or a rhino's horn.

Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks.

Human teeth can detect a grain of sand 1/2,500 of an inch in diameter.

Teeth are only able to experience one sensation, that being pain. When you eat or drink something too hot or too cold, or a dentist operates on your teeth, you will only experience pain because that is the only thing the nerves around your teeth respond to.

One baby in every 1,000 is born with teeth.

It is trendy for youth in Japan to attain uneven snaggle teeth known as "yaeba," or "double tooth."

Humans have 12 molars in total, in four groups of three at the back of the mouth. The molar, which is the farthest back in each group and is the last to appear, is called a wisdom tooth. 

Wisdom teeth get their name because they emerge into the mouth when people are in their 20s, affectionately termed the "Age of Wisdom."

Wisdom tooth By Coronation Dental Specialty Group

The oldest person to grow a new tooth is American Erna Kohane, who managed the feat when she was 92 years and 144 days old in 2014. 

Another American, Joyce Walen, holds the record for having the oldest baby tooth — she still had it when she was 87.

Yellow teeth are stronger, the natural color of our teeth is a light yellow color. Whitening your teeth can permanently weaken them.

People who drink three or more glasses of soda each day have 62% more tooth decay, fillings and tooth loss than others.

Kissing is good for teeth. The anticipation of a kiss increases the flow of saliva to the mouth, giving the teeth a plaque-dispersing wash.

We produce a lot of saliva just before vomiting in order to protect our teeth from erosion due the acidity of vomit.

ANIMAL TEETH

Limpet teeth have the highest tensile strength among biomaterials, outperforming spider silk.

The animal with the most teeth is the slug. They have a flexible band of thousands of microscopic teeth, called a radula. 

Slugs average approximately 27,000 teeth – one species of umbrella slug, Umbraculum, can have up to 750,000 teeth.

Opossums have fifty razor sharp teeth, the highest number of teeth found in any land mammal.

An alligator has about 80 teeth in its mouth at one time and can go through over 2,000 teeth in a lifetime.

Pixiebay

The African Elephant has only four teeth, 5 kg each.

Beavers have four razor-sharp incisors for cutting and 16 back teeth for chewing. Their front teeth never stop growing.

A guinea pigs' teeth never stop growing. They constantly have to grind them down on toys or other things.

Fish communicate with each other by rasping their teeth to make sounds in their throat.

Sloane's viperfish holds the world record for largest teeth relative to head size in a fish. It has teeth so large that it must open its mouth to make the jaws vertical before it can swallow prey.

Source Daily Mail

Tongue

The tongue is a fleshy muscular organ in the mouth of most vertebrates that is usually attached to the floor of the mouth. It has a thick root attached to a u shaped bone (the hyoid) behind. 

Human tongue. By ArnoldReinhold 

HUMAN TONGUE

Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.

The tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body.

Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.

The tongue is covered with mucous membrane containing many nerves and also the taste buds, which distinguish salt, sweet, sour and bitter. 

Taste receptors are present on the human tongue in papillae. By Saurabh R. Patil

The human tongue has more than 10,000 taste buds that replace themselves every 10 days.

The tongue direct foods to the teeth, and presses food and drink back into the throat in the act of swallowing. 

Gennaro Pelliccia's holds the record for the highest insured tongue at £10 million ($14 million). Pelliccia tastes every single batch of coffee beans made for Costa Coffee (UK) shops. 

Top ice cream tasters take out tongue insurance. John Harrison of US firm Dreyer's insured his for $1 million.

Pixiebay

In humans, the tongue plays a vital role in speech. 

Native German and Russian speaker's tongues naturally rest on the bottom of their mouths while English speakers tongues rest on the top.

Tibetans say hello by sticking their tongues out at each other.

Canadian Kunal Jain holds the record for the loudest tongue click, generating a sound level reading of 114.2 decibels — more than the average lawnmower (90db) and car horn (110 db).

Your tongue is germ free only if it is pink. If your tongue is white, there is a thin film of bacteria on it.

The tongue is actually the fastest healing part of the human body.

The widest male human tongue in the world belongs to American Byron Schlenker, at a width of 3.37in (8.57cm) wide. The trait runs in the family; his daughter Byron Schlenker holds the female record at 2.89in (7.33cm) wide. 

ANIMAL TONGUES

In other animals the tongue may be important for other things apart from eating and communication such as lapping up water, or for grooming.

Some animals have tongues that are specially adapted for catching prey. A chameleon's tongue, for instance, is nearly twice as long as its body. To grab prey the tongue shoots out of its mouth at more than 26 body lengths per second—13.4 miles (21.6 kilometers) an hour.

Snakes have no ears so they flick their tongues in and out to pick up sound waves.

As a dog increases its exercise the tongue will increase in size due to greater blood flow. The tongue hangs out of the dog's mouth and the moisture on the tongue will work to cool the bloodflow. 

Pixiebay

Giraffe tongues average around 20 inches in length. They can clean their ears with their very long tongue.

A tiger's tongue is rough enough to lick the paint off of a building.

Source Daily Mail

Toe

Toes are the digits at the end of a human or other animal's foot.

Pixiebay

The Ancient Greeks thought Morton's Toe—a second toe longer than a big toe—was the pinnacle of beauty.

Archaeologists in Egypt discovered a 3,000-year-old prosthetic big toe fitted to the remains of a noble woman. Made from leather and wood, it was refitted several times to exactly match the woman’s foot. 

In 1978, a college professor conducted a study of fingernail biting. His findings revealed approximately 15% of Americans admitted to also chewing their toenails.

The insult "Toerag" originated in the 20th century when tramps used to wrap pieces of cloth around their feet as a desperate alternative to socks. The educated classes quickly noticed this and finding the practice unpleasant, used it dismissively to anyone of inferior status.

The Statue of Liberty has a "Morton's Toe"—her second toe is longer than her big toe.

Statue of Liberty 's Morton's Toe

Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.

Your toes are packed with nociceptors—nerve ending receptors that respond to pain—which is why stubbing your toe hurts so much.

The big toe carries the most weight of all the toes, bearing about 40% of the load.

Humans, and other animals that walk on the soles of their feet, are described as plantigrade. Many animal species such as cats walk on their toes, and they are called digitigrade. Unguligrade animals are those that walk on hooves at the tips of their toes.

Primates and opossums are the only mammals with opposable first toes.

Dogs have four toes on their hind feet, and five on their front feet.

Tears

The chemical composition of tears depends on the emotion you're feeling when you cry them.

Babies' eyes do not produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old.

Pixiebay

The composition of tears is similar to saliva - they're both made of proteins, salt and hormones.

The smell of a woman's tears reduces men's arousal and testosterone levels.

We have three types of tears - basal, reflex and psychic. Psychic tears, the ones we produce when we are sad, have a different chemical make up than the other two and contain a natural pain relief, leucine enkephalin, which is perhaps why we feel better after we cry.

Tears in your eyes often drain through small drain ways called "punctum" near the middle of your lower eyelid. They then drain into your nose, contributing to runny noses. When you choke on food, your eyes water because nasal pressure is reversed sending tears back to your eyes the same way.

By Miika Silfverberg (MiikaS) from Vantaa, Finland - Flickr

Peeling onions produce tears because they contain a chemical irritant called Syn-propanethial-S-oxide which stimulates a gland in your eye.

According to a Christian legend, carnations first appeared on Earth as Jesus carried the Cross. The Virgin Mary shed tears at Jesus' plight, and carnations sprang up from where her tears fell. Thus the pink carnation became the symbol of a mother's undying love.

In Roman times diamonds were worn only by men. Soldiers believed they were the hardened tears of the gods and wore them around their necks in battle to bring courage.

According to Spanish folklore, King Philip III of Spain was looking out of his palace window when he saw a man reading a book by the roadside. The man was laughing so heartily that tears ran down his cheeks. "That man" said the king "is either crazy or reading Don Quixote."

There was no fairy godmother in Grimm's Cinderella. Instead her ballgown was supplied by small hazel tree watered with Cinderella's tears. 

The phrase to "give one the willies" comes from the days when a weeping willow tree was called a ‘willy' — the long trailing branches resembling streams of tears. Now the phrase relates more to nerves or apprehension than to grief.

Tattoo

A tattoo is a permanent design marked on the skin by pricking in ink. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, but tattoos on animals are most often used for identification. 

HISTORY

Cavemen had tattoos. Ötzi the Iceman from 3250 B.C. had 61 tattoos across his body.

In 2017, archaeologists unearthed an ancient tattoo kit in Tennessee that is believed to be about 5,000 years old. The kit consists of sharpened turkey bones that were stained with pigment, along with half-shells that were likely used to hold ink. This discovery is significant because it provides the earliest evidence of tattooing in North America.

The tattoo kit was found in a burial mound that belonged to the Mississippian culture, a Native American civilization that thrived in the region from approximately 800 to 1600 CE. The Mississippian people were known for their complex social organization, elaborate architecture, and artistic traditions. They also practiced tattooing, as evidenced by the discovery of this kit.

The tattoo kit is made up of four sharpened turkey bones, two of which have pigment residues on their tips. The pigment is a mixture of red and black ochre, which are minerals that have been used for centuries for their decorative and symbolic purposes. The half-shells are likely to have been used to hold the ink, which would have been applied to the skin using the sharpened turkey bones.

Ancient (pre-Christian) Egyptian tattooing can be definitively traced back to 2000 B.C. Recent archaeology indicates however that the ancient Egyptians tattooing was limited to women. Evidence suggests that tattooing the body parts of women associated with fertility (breasts, thighs and abdomen) was believed to be a good luck charm to protect the birthing process.

Cattle branding was practiced 4,000 years ago. Old tomb paintings show Egyptians branding their fat, spotted cattle.

Tattoos have also been found on mummies from other ancient civilizations throughout the world, including Nubia the Pazyryk culture of Russia, and from several cultures throughout South America.

The ‘Princess of Ukok’ is the mummy of a young woman found in 1993 in Altai, who is believed to have been a spiritual leader of the nomadic Pazyryk people from 2500 years ago. Hers is one of  the best preserved ancient tattoos. 

The ‘Princess of Ukok’ 

In the Roman Empire, tattooing was a degrading practice used to brand slaves and criminals, and was also sometimes used in pagan religious rites whereby someone became the "slave" of a god. 

In the fourth century A.D., the Montanists, a Christian sect relying heavily on the Book of Revelation, began tattooing themselves as "slaves of God" (Revelation. 7:2-3). 

Many Coptic Christians in Egypt have a cross tattoo in their right wrist to differ them from the Muslims. The earliest evidence of Coptic tattooing goes back to the eighth-century, when Egyptian monks began to brand their hands with Christian symbols. Some scholars believe they learned the practice from Ethiopian Christians, who branded crosses on their foreheads, temples, and wrists. 

The word "tattoo" did not enter into the English language until Westerners first had contact with American Indians and Polynesians during the 1700s. Captain James Cook reported that he had seen tattooing being done when he was in Tahiti in 1769.

The noun and verb "Tattoo", first used in 1769, is from a Polynesian noun (such as Tahitian and Samoan tatau, Marquesan tatu "puncture, mark made on skin").

A Māori chief with tattoos (moko) seen by Cook and his crew

In the late 1820's, James F O'Connell was shipwrecked on Pohnpei, one of the Caroline Islands in the South Pacific. He saved himself from death at the hands of the Ponapeans natives by performing a series of Irish jigs for their amusement. Though his life was spared, the locals coerced him into getting tattooed head to toe by the locals. When O'Connell was eventually rescued, he joined PT Barnum's Circus as "The Tattooed Irishman" and became the world's first tattooed showman.

A swallow tattoo was popular with 19th century sailors who, traditionally, were permitted to adorn themselves with one after sailing 5,000 nautical miles and a second after 10,000 nautical miles. 

9 out of 10 Navy sailors had tattoos in the late 1800s. A pig on one foot and a rooster on the other were believed to protect them from drowning.

The stereotypical anchor tattoo indicated a sailor had crossed the Atlantic.

On a visit to the Holy Land in 1862, Queen Victoria's son Albert, Prince of Wales - later King Edward VII - had a Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his arm. it started a trend, with 100,000 Britons said to have got their own inkings.  

Until 1879 soldiers in the British Army guilty of bad conduct were tattooed with the initials BC. 

The first recorded professional tattoo artist in the United States was a German immigrant, Martin Hildebrandt. He opened a shop in New York City in 1846. 

The electric pen, invented by Thomas Edison in 1875, was converted into the first electric tattoo needle by Samuel O'Reilly in the 1890s.

Jessie Knight was the UK's first prominent female tattoo artist. She began her tattooing career in 1921 in Barry, South Wales, having learnt how to tattoo from her father. Knight was also a star circus sharpshooter who shot her abusive ex-husband.

The US Navy used to forbid "obscene" tattoos, which led to a boom in tattoos of nude women among men who didn't want to serve. If they joined the navy later, they had to have a tattoo artist "dress" the woman.

It was illegal to get a tattoo in New York City between 1961 and 1997, which forced tattoo artists to operate on an underground basis.

Tattooing was illegal in South Carolina until 2004.

Below is an 1888 Japanese woodblock print of a prostitute biting her handkerchief in pain as her arm is tattooed. Based on historical practice, the tattoo is likely the name of her lover.

Since the 1970s, tattoos have become a mainstream part of Western fashion, common among both genders, to all economic classes. One in five U.S. adults has at least one tattoo (21percent) which is up from the 16 percent and 14 percent who reported having a tattoo in 2003 and 2008, respectively.

20 million people in the UK have tattoos, making them Europe's most inked country.

FAMOUS PEOPLE WITH TATTOOS

In 1881, the future King George V of the UK got a tattoo in Japan, while serving in the Royal Navy. A local artist inked a red and blue dragon onto his arm, although the tattoo was never shown in public.

Lucky Diamond Rich (born Gregory Paul McLaren in 1971) is a New Zealand-born performance artist and street performer who holds the Guinness World Record for most tattooed man, taking the title from Tom Leppard in 2006. He has tattoos covering 100% of his body, including the insides of his eyelids, mouth, ears and foreskin. 

Lucky Diamond Rich face.By TOONMAN_

In 2018 Florida resident Charlotte Guttenberg officially became the world's most tattooed woman ever with 98.75% of her body covered in ink. Charlotte only received her first tattoo after her 50th birthday, but her frequent sessions to the tattoo parlor have resulted in her becoming a record breaker.

When he turned 104, UK citizen Jack Reynolds became the oldest person to receive their first tattoo.

US sideshow performer “The Enigma” (Paul Lawrence) has the surface of his body divided by tattoos into 2,123 jigsaw pieces. 

FUN TATTOO FACTS

3000 times a minute is the maximum number of times a tattoo needle can penetrate the skin.

A modern tattoo machine. By Manfred Kohrs 

In South Korea, only a medical professional with a doctor's license is legally allowed to give someone a tattoo.

Norwegian metalhead, Tom Engelbrecht, holds the Guinness World Record for most tattoos of the same band, with a total of 43 Metallica tattoos on his body (as of December 5, 2023). His tattoos include album covers, DVD artwork, lyrics and band-member portraits, many spanning the right side of his body from ankle up to shoulder.

Laser removal doesn't remove the tattoo. It just helps break it down so white blood cells can carry it away. You poop out your tattoo.

Source Christianitytoday 

Taste

Taste is the sensation produced when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor cells located on taste buds, which are mainly on the tongue. 

Pixiebay

The human tongue has between 2000 and 5000 taste buds that are located on the back and front, which replace themselves every 10 days. Others are located on the roof, sides and back of the mouth, and in the throat. 

Your lungs have taste buds that can detect bitterness.

You have exactly the same taste buds in your intestine as you do in your tongue. In your tongue, the buds are hooked up to your brain's pleasure centers. In your intestine, they're hooked up to your pancreas where they trigger the release of insulin.

The tongue is covered with thousands of small bumps called papillae, which are visible to the naked eye. Within each papilla are hundreds of taste buds. Each taste bud contains 50 to 100 taste receptor cells. 

Taste bud By NEUROtiker - Own work, 

Humans have about 9000 taste buds, dogs have about 2000 taste buds.

HUMANS

An average child is born with about 10,000 taste buds. An average elderly person only has about 5,000. 

Females tend to have more taste buds than males.

The taste map of the tongue that many people learned in school is nonsense. Taste receptors for salty, sweet, bitter and sour are found all over the tongue.

DMSO is an organic solvent, which has the unusual property that you can "Taste" it by touching it. This happens because it directly triggers the nerves that normally react to taste.

Food can only be tasted when mixed with saliva.

Airplane food isn't very tasty because around one third of your taste buds are numbed while flying.

An unborn baby can taste what its mother is eating and develop a preference for the foods that she consumes.

Pixiebay

The reason children hate vegetables is because many of them have a bitter taste. As you age and your taste buds diminish, this bitter flavor goes away somewhat and changes the taste of the vegetables dramatically in the process. 

English theologian William Buckland (March 12- 1784 – August 14 1856) claimed to have eaten his way through the animal kingdom. He opined that mole meat tastes vile and was the most distasteful along with bluebottle.

Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.

The sensation of carbonation is actually a taste, not the feeling of bubbles bursting in the mouth.

A chemical in toothpaste causes your bitter taste buds to overreact causing food to taste funny after you brush your teeth.

Pixiebay

Adolf Hitler lost his taste buds during a gas attack in the 1914-18 World War and as a result he adored spicy food.

In 2002 when scientists studied a 100-year-old original recipe for veal stock, they identified a fifth taste category that was not sweet, bitter, sour, or salty. Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda identified the savory taste as glutamic acid, which he called "umami," or Japanese for "yummy".

ANIMALS

Cats have only around 473 tastebuds and are the only mammals that can't taste sweetness.

Pixiebay

The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds. That makes the catfish rank number one for the animal having the most taste buds. 

A Komodo dragon can taste their prey from over two miles away.

Butterflies, houseflies and lobsters are among the animals who taste with their feet.