Eight Things About Left-handedness

1) What does it mean to be left-handed?

It means having a preference for using your left hand for a variety of tasks, including writing, throwing, pointing, catching. It also implies a preference for using your left foot for kicking, and as the prime foot when walking, running or cycling.

Many lefthanders use the right hand for some tasks, just as some righthanders are left handed in sports particularly where a bat is used.

A lefthander may also prefer to use the left eye for telescopes, camera sights, and microscopes.

2) Left-handed sport

While left-handed cricketers, golfers and baseball players are all highly regarded, you can’t be a left-handed hockey player in New Zealand.

And left-handers are banned from polo – it spooks the horses.

Another sport than doesn’t allow left-handed play is Jai-alai, where all players are required to wear the cesta on their right hand.

Almost half the world’s leading tennis players are left-handed.

3) Left-handedness runs in families. In the British royal family, for example,

Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles and Prince William are all left-handed. And the Queen Mother and Queen Victoria were also left-handed.

4) Left-handed presidents.

Until the right-handed George Bush Jnr came along, four out of five of the most recent US Presidents had been lefties.

5) Left-handed geniuses

A large number of lefties have been geniuses (Einstein), artists (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Picasso), and athletes (Babe Ruth). A large number have also been criminals (Jack the Ripper, Billy the Kid).

6) Some left-handed oddities

The designers of Singer sewing machines gave the skilled job of steering the cloth past the needle to the left hand while the right merely cranks the wheel.

The number of words in English which are typed solely with the left hand is 1447. Only 187 words are typed solely with the right hand. “Stewardesses” is the longest English word typed with only the left hand.

There are 88 ways of saying “left-handed” according to the Dialect and Folk Studies Institute of Leeds University.

7) Left-handed animals?

Lobsters are left-clawed, along with badgers, parrots, wolves and bears. It’s believed all polar bears are left-handed.

The past and present

Expert have shown that the majority of Stone Age tools were for the left-handed, and more than half the population was southpaw in the Bronze Age.

It’s even thought that more left-handers are being born than before.