International Left-Handers Day is held on Aug 13 every year. Here are five things you may not know about left-handers.
1. Sinistrality is the formal name for left-handedness
It is based on the Latin word “sinistra,” for “on the left”.
Published research by social scientist John Dacey shows that left-handers have been regarded with a certain amount of suspicion by society as a whole through the ages.
British educational psychologist Cyril Lodowic Burt in 1937 suggested that left-handers were obstinate introverts, who refused to use their right hand to write with, not because they could not but because they would not.
Such association with educational backwardness and nonconformity led to parents and teachers at that time to force their children to use their right hand for writing and other manual tasks.
2. Many famous people are left-handed
Among them are American president Barack Obama, leader of India’s independence movement Mahatma Gandhi, theoretical physicist Albert Einstein and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (pic).
3. Not only humans can be “left-handed”
More cats are left-pawed than right-pawed. According to Australian site Cat World, out of every 100 cats, about 40 are left-pawed, 20 are right-pawed, and 40 are ambidextrous.
4. Specialty stores sell products just for left-handers
There are stores that sell products specially made for left-handed people. Such products include school supplies like rulers, pens and notebooks, baking supplies like measuring cups mittens and spatulas, and all kinds of cutting tools.
5. Left-handers may be predisposed to certain occupations
In a 1996 study, Harvard Medical School researchers found that orthopaedic surgeons, librarians and mathematicians were mostly right-handed, while attorneys and architects were, as a group, “either the least right-handed or the most left-handed”.
Other studies have shown that there are more left-handed people working as artists and musicians, and in university settings. — The Nation/ANN
