Left-Handers Day: 10 Facts About The Wonderful Left

As the name suggests, it is meant to promote awareness of the inconveniences faced by left-handers in a predominantly right-handed world. Right-handed gadgets, awkwardly designed desks, cooking tools that fit comfortably in your right hand (now that’s just not right!). So take a moment to pause and appreciate the plight of your left-handed friends living in a right-handed world.

To mark International Left-Handers Day, which falls every year on August 13, here are 10 lovely left-leaning facts about the wonderful left:

1. Just 10 per cent of the world’s population is left-handed and this has remained roughly the case for thousands of years.
2. Men are also more likely to be left-handed.
3. Left-handedness is twice as common in twins than in the general population.
4. Mothers who are over 40 at the time of a child’s birth are 128% more likely to have a left-handed baby than a woman in her 20s.
5. Left-handedness runs in families. Lefties in the British royal family include the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, and Prince William.
6. Connections between the right and left sides of the brain are faster in left-handed people, which suggests that left-handers are more efficient multi-taskers.
7. Studies have shown that if a left-hander injures his dominant hand, he has an easier time learning to use the other hand than his right-handed counterparts.
8. Researchers suggest that the proportion of left-handers has remained constant for over 30,000 years.
9. Many people who are left-handed draw figures that face to the right.
10. Tests conducted by St. Lawrence University in New York found that there were more left-handed people with IQs over 140 than right-handed people.

Happy Left-Handers Day!