ALL ABOUT LEFT-HANDERS DAY AND BEING A LEFTY!

What do Lady Gaga, Barack Obama, Desmond Tutu, and Justin Bieber have in common? Well besides being famous, inspiring, and pretty handy with a microphone, they're also all left-handed. So, if you're a lefty, pat yourself on the back!

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And today's an even better reason to celebrate being a lefty as it’s International Left-Handers Day. The unofficial holiday was launched in 1992 by the Left-Handers Club in the United Kingdom, and it's the one day out of the year set aside to celebrate left-handers. They say: “It’s your chance to tell your family and friends how proud you are of being left-handed, and also raise awareness of the everyday issues that lefties face as we live in a world designed for right-handers.”

Left-handers have it rough in a mostly right-handed world. They have to deal with fumbling around with scissors, doing battle with can openers, and elbow wars with their right-handed desk-sharing mates.



IT’S ALL IN THE GENES
Roughly 10 to 12 percent of the world’s population is left-handed and it's about twice as common in twins. But about 12 percent of men and only 8 percent of women are lefties.

Most humans have likely been right-handed for millions of years, but the split among other animals is closer to half. Humans are one of the few animals to show a preference between the left and right hand. Most creatures, even apes, our closest cousins in the animal kingdom show a 50-50 split when it comes to which hand, foot, or paw they use the most.

Left-handed animals include kangaroos, which tend to favour their left paw for grooming and eating. And 90 percent of parrots use their left foot to pick things up.

So why not half of each in humans? It's not because of the direction we write – then countries, where people write from the right, would've had more lefties. Even genes don't provide an answer. Though left-handedness can run in families, only about 25 percent of kids with two left-handed parents are also southpaws.

LEFTIES THROUGH THE AGES
People have had all kinds of beliefs about left-handers. One is that they don’t live as long. The explanation for this might be that lefties used to be forced to switch hands in past generations. So now it looks like there are fewer old left-handers.

"I'm left-handed: I can think and feel at the same time. My feminine side is very highly developed." – Laurence Fishburne, Oscar-winning actor

Sinister, today meaning evil or malevolent in some way, comes from a Latin word for "on the left side" according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Left became associated with evil probably because most people were right-handed. The Ancient Celts, for example, worshipped the left side, associating it with femininity and the fertile womb. In many ancient cultures, the left was considered the weak and feminine side. Beginning with the appearance of Eve on Adam’s left in the Bible, the Christian tradition started linking the left to immorality.

It goes beyond belief systems, though. We say a clumsy person has "two left feet" and someone you rely on is your "right-hand man" (or woman).

“Throughout much of Africa, and in the Middle East and so on you get this thing you eat your food with your right hand, and you cleanse your body and do the unclean parts with your left hand. That’s not an uncommon set of beliefs and social processes throughout Africa,” says Chris McManus, author of Right Hand, Left Hand. “But there are other stories as well. There are places where the left-handed are regarded as magical, better, different, and so on. So you do get this both ways,” he adds.

Jimi Hendrix was a southpaw guitarist but his father believed that playing left-handed was a sign of the devil and tried to force him to change. He didn't thankfully and played a right-hand guitar upside down instead.

It’s not true, though, that left-handers are more creative because most of them use their "right-brain". Think Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, Mark Twain, Paul McCartney, and David Bowie.

The brain’s right half controls the left side of the body and the left controls the right side. The two sides specialise a little – for instance, language is usually processed a little more in the left half and recognising faces a bit more in the right. But the halves don’t work separately anyway. They’re connected by a thick band of nerve fibres.

“Left-handers are not different because they are unique; They are unique because they are different.” – Peter-Cole C. Onele, Nigerian entrepreneur and lawyer

A study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology found it isn’t necessarily which hand you use that determines your brain's performance. Instead, it’s how often you stick to that hand. People who switch sides often showed better brain function and accessed the right side of the brain more, compared to people who could use only their left or right hand.

But if you’re really looking for a way to use your left to your advantage, a 2006 study by the Australian National University found that the two sides of the brain interact quicker and more efficiently in left-handed people. This means it might be easier for them to handle activities where a lot of stimuli are processed. So, sports and gaming, lefties!



FAMOUS LEFT-HANDERS

• Desmond Tutu
• Oprah Winfrey, actress, talk-show, and media mogul.
• Lady Gaga, musician and actress.
• Albert Einstein, a German-born physicist (1879-1955) who developed the theory of relativity.
• Helen Keller, author, political activist, and lecturer was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
• Barack Obama, one of several left-handed US presidents. Others include Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Gerald Ford.
• Neil Armstrong (1930-2012), the first person to walk on the moon.
• Bill Gates (born 1955) founder of Microsoft.
• Marie Curie (1867-1934), physicist and chemist, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.
• Angelina Jolie, Oscar-winning actress, and filmmaker.
• Steve Jobs (1955-2011), co-founder of Apple.
• Justin Bieber, musician.

Resource: Left-In is an international interest group aiming to help teachers work with left-handed kids.