Times have changed. Remember the days when you could stick a crying baby in a cage and hang it outside the window of tall building? No? Me neither, but apparently you once could.
Invented and patented in 1922 by Emma Read, the "Portable Baby Cage" was designed to provide fresh air and sunlight to babies and small children being raised in crowded cities.
Apparently, over the past few years, there has been an increasing number of people tattooing the white area of their eyes.
This fairly new body modification was first attempted back in 2007 by tattoo artist LunaCobra and was performed on Shannon Larratt, Pauly Unstoppable and Josh Rahn. Here is a link to an article written by Larratt describing how it all went down.
Shannon Larratt having his eye tattooed
In this Eyeball Tattoo FAQ, Larratt claims that a great deal of research was done prior to the experiment. Interestingly, he summarizes the history of eyeball tattooing stating that the earliest reference dates back almost two thousand years when a Roman doctor attempted to color white patches over the iris. In the 19th century doctors made many attempts to use tattooing methods to cosmetically correct eye deformities. Larratt goes on to say that in the early 1900's, eyeball tattooing was advertised in newspapers by tattoo artist to change the color of the iris but points out that it is unknown if anyone actually went through with the procedure and that no references to these services exist beyond 1920.
Though I doubt it will become a big thing in the near future, eyeball tattooing has started to gain some popularity. Here are a few examples for your viewing pleasure.
