| rdfs:comment | - In 1984, a tattoo-obsessed couple, Mary and Sam Jones, came up with an idea that would surpass the conventional "I heart" type of tattoos, which they considered an overdone cliché. Instead, with the aid of a surgeon and tattoo artist, Sam Jones would have "Mary Jones Forever" written across his left ventricle, in Chinese kanji. The procedure drew the attention of thousands of enthusiasts across the world. When Sam Jones died of complications due to having a tattoo machine continuously piercing his beating heart, it was revealed that the procedure had a 99% chance of fatality. Almost overnight, people were dragging their tattoo artist and lining up in front of surgeon's offices. In order to offset the high mortality rate associated with tattooing the human heart and have some sort of fixed
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| abstract | - In 1984, a tattoo-obsessed couple, Mary and Sam Jones, came up with an idea that would surpass the conventional "I heart" type of tattoos, which they considered an overdone cliché. Instead, with the aid of a surgeon and tattoo artist, Sam Jones would have "Mary Jones Forever" written across his left ventricle, in Chinese kanji. The procedure drew the attention of thousands of enthusiasts across the world. When Sam Jones died of complications due to having a tattoo machine continuously piercing his beating heart, it was revealed that the procedure had a 99% chance of fatality. Almost overnight, people were dragging their tattoo artist and lining up in front of surgeon's offices. In order to offset the high mortality rate associated with tattooing the human heart and have some sort of fixed survival rate, surgeons and tattoo artists branched out to working on other body parts. As for Sam Jones' heart, the determined tattoo artist completed the design, although Jones had been declared dead twenty minutes earlier. His heart is now available for viewing at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. At the time, the first tattooed heart in history was a much revered symbol of undying love, until recently: a Chinese translator has put a damper on the Jones/heart tattoo legacy by pointing out the tattoo does not read "Mary Jones Forever" but "Spicy Beef with Broccoli", thus now the exhibit is now titled "Human Heart with 'Spicy Beef with Broccoli' written on it"
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