Left-Handedness Facts

Left-Handedness Facts: About one in ten people are left handed, a ratio that has held remarkably steady across cultures and history; it arises from a mix of genes and early development, and lefties have long navigated tools, desks and attitudes designed for right handers.

Sinister: The Latin word for left also came to mean unlucky or evil, while dexter, meaning right, gave us dexterity, a linguistic bias repeated in many languages.

Chris McManus: The psychologist found the share of left handers in Britain roughly tripled during the 20th century as schools stopped forcing children to switch hands.

Neanderthals: Scratch marks on their fossil teeth, made while cutting meat held in the mouth, show that right handedness dominated our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Charlotte Faurie: Her 2004 study found that more violent traditional societies had higher shares of left handers, supporting the fighting hypothesis that lefties gain a surprise advantage in combat.

Olympic Fencing: Left handers are heavily overrepresented among elite fencers because opponents get far less practice facing them.

Rafael Nadal: The famous left handed tennis champion is naturally right handed, and his uncle and coach Toni had him play lefty for the competitive edge.

Jimi Hendrix: His father pushed him to play right handed, so he often flipped a right handed guitar upside down and restrung it to play lefty.

Leonardo da Vinci: The left handed genius filled his notebooks with mirror writing that runs right to left, possibly to avoid smudging his ink.

King George VI: The naturally left handed king was made to write with his right hand as a child, a practice some biographers have speculatively linked to his stammer.

International Left Handers Day: Every August 13 lefties celebrate a day launched in 1976 by Dean Campbell of Lefthanders International to raise awareness of a right handed world.

Anything Left-Handed: Opened in London in 1968, this was one of the world's first shops devoted entirely to left handed products, from scissors to can openers.

Fiskars: Its left handed scissors reverse the blades, because in standard scissors a lefty's grip pushes the blades apart and hides the cutting line.

M16 Rifle: Early versions ejected hot shell casings toward a left handed shooter's face, so the M16A2 added a brass deflector behind the ejection port.

UK Biobank: A 2019 analysis of about 400,000 people linked left handedness to gene regions involved in brain development, with left handers showing stronger connections between language areas.

Sarah Medland: Her large twin research found genes account for only about a quarter of handedness, which is why identical twins can have different dominant hands.

Peter Hepper: His ultrasound research found that which thumb a fetus prefers to suck in the womb strongly predicts the child's handedness years later.

Edinburgh Handedness Inventory: Created in 1971, this short questionnaire about tasks like writing and brushing teeth is still the standard way scientists measure handedness.

Broca's Area: Language is centered in the left hemisphere for about 95 percent of right handers but for only roughly three quarters of left handers.

Barack Obama: He is one of several left handed US presidents, and in 1992 both major party candidates, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, were lefties.

Southpaw: The term is often traced to baseball, where parks were laid out so pitchers faced west and a lefty's throwing arm pointed south.

Kangaroos: A 2015 study found that several kangaroo species are mostly left handed, showing that strong hand preference isn't unique to primates.

Parrots: Many parrot species are predominantly left footed, using the left foot to hold food while they eat.

Stanley Coren: His 1991 claim that left handers die about nine years earlier made headlines, but it was later shown to be a statistical artifact of older lefties having been forced to switch.

Phil Mickelson: The golf champion is right handed in daily life but plays left handed because he learned by mirroring his father's swing.