Highlights from the History of Left-Handedness

 

1470 The Scots-Irish Kerr family produced so many left-handed offspring, it was said they designed all of their castle’s staircases to favor left-handed swordsmen and put all right-handed intruders at a disadvantage.

 

1508 Michelangelo, only thirty-three, began painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II. The resulting frescoes—which Michelangelo labored at for nearly three years— portrayed Adam as having received life from God through the left hand, and only further enhanced the artist’s widespread reputation as Il divino (“the Divine One”). It was said that Michelangelo, who was ambidextrous, switched hands back and forth to avoid cramps while painting the ceiling.

 

1519 Left-handed genius Leonardo da Vinci died in Cloux, France, at the age of sixty-seven. He left behind numerous portfolios full of observations on life, nature, and human anatomy—all written in “mirror writing, ” a minute backward script that ran from right to left. Said the sixteenth-century Italian art historian Vasari, “He wrote backwards in rude characters, and with the left hand, so that anyone who is not practiced in reading them, cannot understand them.” Some of Leonardo’s contemporaries speculated that he used the baffling script to conceal potentially heretical thoughts about God and nature. (p. 35)

 

1604 King James I signed a new law reinforcing previous prohibitions against the practice of witchcraft and demon worship. The act led to the wholesale slaughter of suspected witches all over England: in fact by the mid-1700s, thousands of people—the vast majority of them women, and many of them left-handed—had been put to death. Left-handedness was often (though inconsistently) regarded as evidence of demonic possession. Likewise, large moles and birthmarks on the left side of the body were interpreted as marks of the Devil.

 

1660 Scottish linguist Sir Thomas Urquhart, best known for his English translation of the poet Rabelais, died in France. During his lifetime, he had tried to develop what he regarded as the ideal universal language, in which each word, instead of being read from left to right, could be read the same either backward or forward. He died—of apoplexy during a fit of uncontrollable laughter one night—before he could complete the task.

 

1761 The first mass-scale production of scissors—right-handed scissors, hundreds of them—began in England.

 

1779 A vain, temperamental—and left-handed—young Corsican, Napolé on Bonaparte, entered the military college at Brienne, France, where he soon distinguished himself with, among other things, his utterly illegible penmanship and his total inability to spell any word correctly. “His teachers couldn’t decipher his compositions, ” one of his schoolmates later recalled, “and he himself had trouble re-reading what he had written. Years later, after Napolé on became emperor, his former penmanship teacher applied to him for a government pension. “Ah, so you’re the one! ” Napolé on reportedly told the old man. “Well, you don’t have much to brag about! ” Nonetheless, he granted his former instructor a generous pension of 1, 200 francs.

 

1799 The first merry-go-round in the United States was unveiled in Salem, Massachusetts. The new contraption, like almost everything in life, discriminated against left-handers: riders had to reach for the brass ring with their right hands. (p. 36)

 

1811 The original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, were born in Siam. The two were bound by a medium-sized bridge of flesh that ran from breastbone to navel, and like all fully developed Siamese twins, one was left-handed, the other right-handed. In time, the two men achieved international fame touring in various circuses and exhibitions. They also eventually married (two non-twin sisters, Sarah and Adelaide Yates) and fathered twenty-one children.

 

1836 E. W. Lane published his An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, in which he reported, “Many of the Arabs will not allow the left hand to touch food excepting when the right is maimed.... It is a rule with the Muslims to honor the right hand above the left: to use the right hand for all honourable purposes, and the left for actions which, though necessary, are unclean.”

 

1848 Working at his lab in Paris, Louis Pasteur concluded that “handedness” (in everything from molecules to people to celestial bodies) was one of the underlying principles of nature. His discovery came as a result of research into the properties of tartaric acid and racemic acid—which have the same chemical composition, but are mirror images of one another, like a pair of gloves.

 

1876 Italian psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso, director of the lunatic asylum at Pesaro, published his book The Delinquent Male, in which he boldly asserted that men who are left-handed (or who have narrow foreheads or protruding ears) are psychological degenerates prone to crimes of violence. A short time later, he published The Delinquent Female, in which he made similar assertions about women.

 

1880 Western outlaw Billy the Kid took time from other activities to have his picture taken at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The resulting photograph—widely reproduced in newspapers and books—showed the Kid apparently wearing his holster on the left hip, giving rise to the widespread supposition that he was (p. 37) left-handed. In fact, what most people never realized was that the photograph was a tintype—a reversed image—and the holster was actually on Billy’s right hip. Whatever the truth about Billy’s hand preference, eyewitnesses attested to his deadly precision firing a gun with either hand or, on at least one occasion, firing two pistols at once, one in each hand.

 

A FAMOUS WOODEN LEFT HAND One-handed Captain Jean Danjou was a revered member of the French Foreign Legion in the mid-nineteenth century. Despite the fact that his left hand was a wooden prosthesis (a considerable handicap in those days), he was renowned for his adventurousness and bravery. In the 1860s, Danjou found himself fighting in Mexico to help defend the ill-fated emperor Maximilian. Suddenly ambushed by nearly two thousand Mexican soldiers at an outpost near Camerone, Danjou and sixty-three of his men were hopelessly outnumbered. However, Danjou rejected Mexican demands that he surrender, and instead he and his fellow legionnaires fought to the death. Danjou’s wooden left hand was later recovered by comrades from the site of the massacre and sent back to the Legion’s headquarters in Algeria—where it was proudly displayed for decades as a revered symbol of Legionnaire determination and honor.

 

1881 James Garfield became the first left-handed U.S. president. During his brief term of office, Garfield often amused visitors by sitting at his desk and writing classical Greek with his left hand while simultaneously writing Latin with his right. Unfortunately, he was shot four months after his inauguration—by a right-handed assassin who boisterously sang, “I am going to the Lordy, I am so glad! ” while ascending the gallows.

 

1884 The notorious left-handed swindler and confidence man Colonel Alexander Branscom was apprehended in New York City and sentenced to ten years in prison. Branscom—a dapper (p. 38) and irresistibly charming middle-aged Virginian who was missing his right hand (he told people he’d lost it in the Civil War)—posed as a book publisher to bilk unsuspecting advertisers and contractors out of tens of thousands of dollars. His forgeries of checks, letters, and loan agreements were considered flawless. “His expertness with the pen is a marvel, ” said one police chief, “in view of his being obliged to write with his left hand.”

 

1891 The term “southpaw” was first coined by Chicago sportswriter Charles Seymour to describe left-handed baseball pitchers. Because of the way some old ballparks were situated, pitchers faced west: thus, a left-handed pitcher’s pitching arm was to the south.

 

1892 A twenty-six-year-old left-handed boxing challenger, Jim Corbett, stunned the sports world by defeating champion John Sullivan in a bout in New Orleans. A knockout in the twenty-first round won Corbett the championship—and elicited boos and sneers from the crowd, none of whom had ever seen a boxer bound, dodge, and zigzag around the ring the way Corbett did Corbett—who had previously earned his living as a bank teller—spent weeks in advance choreographing his footwork for the match. He held the championship until 1897, when he finally lost it to a twenty-four-year-old right-handed challenger, Bob Fitzsimmons, in a bout in Carson City, Nevada. Corbett later went on to establish a successful career for himself as a stage actor.

 

1895 The world’s first ballpoint pen made its appearance on the commercial market. However, its use wasn’t generally accepted until almost fifty years later. Though a distinct improvement over fountain pens (with their misangled nibs and messy ink), the early ballpoints still ensured that there would be decades of left-handers with smudged handwriting and stained left hands.

 

1900 Eighteen-year-old artist Pablo Picasso made his first copper engraving: El Zurdo (“The Left-Hander”). The work depicted (p. 39) a left-handed picador in action in the bullring. In fact, Picasso had actually drawn the picador as right-handed; but, forgetting that the engraving would be reversed during printing, he wound up instead with the picador holding his lance in his left hand. Rather than destroy the plate, Picasso simply changed the title.

 

1905 British social activist John Jackson founded the Ambidextral Culture Society in London and made a passionate plea for mankind to return to a “pure” state of ambidexterity like the apes he had seen at the London Zoo. “There is no disadvantage, but every advantage, in our being truly ambidextrous! ” Jackson wrote in a book devoted to the subject “Why should not perfect Ambidexterity be possible now? WHY CANNOT MAN BE AMBIDEXTROUS AGAIN? ”

 

1907 Lord Baden-Powell, a former officer and spy of the British army, founded the Boy Scouts after running a trial camp for boys on Brownsea Island off the southern coast of England. A short time later, he adopted the left-handed handshake as the “official” handshake of the organization. It was said that he got the idea from an African tribe whose bravest warriors greeted one another left-handedly. Baden-Powell was himself ambidextrous and became an ardent proponent of John Jackson’s Ambidextral Culture Society.

 

1920 Authorities estimated that only 2 percent of U.S. schoolchildren wrote with their left hands. Fifty years later, the number would increase to about 15 percent.

 

1931 Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev completed his Piano Concerto No. 4, “For the Left Hand.” The work was composed especially for one-armed Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein. However, after reviewing the piece, with its unusual melodic structure and unconventional harmonies, Wittgenstein returned the work with his apologies and a note explaining, “Thank you for the concerto, but I don’t understand a note of it, and shall not play it.” Although the work was eventually premiered with (p. 40) a different pianist, it drew lukewarm reviews and remained for many years the least popular of Prokofiev’s five piano concerti.

 

1936 Left-handed batter Ty Cobb became the first baseball player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

1945 Harry S. Truman became only the second left-handed president in U.S. history.

 

 

1946 A twenty-year-old left-handed baseball pitcher from the University of Havana, Fidel Castro, flew to the United States to try out for a place on the Washington Senators baseball team. Castro—who excelled at a wide variety of sports—had previously been voted his country’s best all-around school athlete. (p. 41) However, the Senators turned him down, and he returned Havana, where he got his law degree and subsequently devoted I himself to the overthrow of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista.

 

1951 England’s King George VI—a natural left-hander forced at an early age to write with his right hand—recorded his final Christmas Day address to the nation. Unfortunately, the king was plagued more than usual by his lifelong stammer, and (according to his assistant Michael Barsley, who later wrote the book Left-Handed People) it was necessary to heavily edit the tape—deleting all the pauses, hesitations, and mispronunciations—before the speech was coherent enough for broadcast.

 

1952 A U.S. Army study found that of 6, 040 recent recruits, 8.6 percent were left-handed. The Army’s surgeon general viewed this as a reflection of the number of left-handers in society as a whole.

 

1965 Thirty-four-year-old left-hander Albert DeSalvo confessed to being the notorious “Boston Strangler, ” who had killed thirteen women and sexually assaulted dozens of others between 1962 and 1964. “Hey, ” he cheerfully told the press, “they even know me in the Soviet Union! ” Once in prison, DeSalvo was fond of slipping female visitors a copy of a book about him, with the inscription, “Can’t wait to get my hands around your throat.”

 

1967 Guitar virtuoso Jimi Hendrix electrified crowds at the Monterey Fop Festival. He played the guitar not only with his left hand, but with his left elbow, his teeth, his tongue, and, at one point, his groin. He then doused the instrument with lighter fluid and set it aflame onstage. The New York Times dubbed him “the black Elvis.” He died three years later of complications from drug use.

 

1968 Falsetto camp singer Tiny Tim—famous for his string hair and his androgynous persona—played the ukulele left-handed (p. 42) and sang “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” on the TV show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.

 

1969 Left-handed astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the second human being to walk on the moon. Approximately one-fourth of all the Apollo astronauts were left-handed.

 

1970 New Yorker June Gittleson opened The Left Hand, a small shop in Manhattan devoted to hard-to-find items (cameras, soup ladles, bowling balls, wristwatches, even boomerangs) for left-handed people. Gittleson told the press that not only was she left-handed, but, “I’m also left-eyed, left-footed, and left-eared. My dog isn’t here, but I’ve trained him to shake hands left-handed.”

 

1972 Left-handed U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz became the focus of attention at the otherwise tragedy-marred summer Olympics in Munich. Spitz, a handsome and photogenic dental student from California, had already won two gold medals in 1968 and came to Munich intending to sweep all the events in which he was entered. He was true to his word: not only did he win a record seven gold medals—more than any other individual athlete at a single Olympics—but he broke four world records.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, another left-handed athlete—bowling champion Patty Costello—was named “Female Bowler of the Year” by the American Bowling Congress.

 

1976 Lefthander magazine (originally called Lefty) made its debut. Devoted to the interests and needs of southpaws around the world, the magazine was founded by Kansas businessman Dean Campbell, who later organized the first International Left-handers Day on August 13, 1976. Campbell acknowledged that the event was held on the 13th to make fun of all the superstitions surrounding left-handedness.

 

1976 Cathy—a comic strip written by left-handed cartoonist Cathy Guisewite—premiered in sixty newspapers across the country and quickly established itself as one of the most popular (p. 43) comic strips in the nation. The strip features a single, working woman named Cathy, who is also—like her creator—left-handed.

 

1977 A Huntington, Pennsylvania, woman, Mary Francis Beckley, left $10, 000 to nearby Juniata College to be used for scholarships for worthy young students. Her only stipulation was that the recipients of the aid must be left-handed. Beckley and her late husband were themselves both left-handers.

 

1980 The Riverside, Missouri, police department fired a left- handed officer, “Woody” Winborn, after he refused to wear his gun holster, per tradition, on the right side. Winborn later sued the department and received an out-of-court settlement.

 

1985 A left-handed supermarket checker in Woodridge, Illinois, won a “left-handed” discrimination suit against the store where she had once worked. The checker, Crystal Sagen, said she had felt compelled to quit her job after repeated clashes with the manager, who insisted she use her right hand—and only her right hand—to run groceries over the computerized laser scanners. “It didn’t make sense, ” Sagen said. “It was discrimination against left-handers.” She was awarded $136, 000 in damages.

 

1987 The 1988 presidential campaign got under way with an unprecedented one-in-four chance that the next president would be left-handed. Of the twelve presidential candidates, three (all Republicans) were left-handed: Pat Robertson, Robert Dole, and George Bush. Bush was elected several months later, raising—in the words of humorist Dave Barry—“a troublesome constitutional issue, because every time he signs a bill into law he drags his hand through the signature and messes it up.”

 

1990 A study at the Montreal Neurological Institute revealed that while people may vary in which hand, foot, ear, and eye they favor, the right nostril is dominant in all people. The study showed that the right nostril is significantly more effective than the left in discriminating between odors. (p. 44)

 

1990 Timex Corporation put out its first left-handed watch—the “Lefty”—designed with the stem (for setting the time) on the left side. Price: $27.95.

 

1991 A study by psychologists Diane Halpern and Stanley Coren concluded that left-handers live an average of nine years less than right-handers, largely as a result of accidents and injuries sustained while trying to function in a predominantly right-handed society. Halpern was later paired off against Lefthander magazine editor Suzan Ireland during a segment of Larry King Live. “This just seems totally outrageous, ” Ireland said of the study, while acknowledging that it at least drew attention to the problems of left-handers. The two also began arguing over whether former president Ronald Reagan had been left-handed. “He did certain activities with his left hand, ” Halpern asserted. “If you watch him waving, for example...” “He was not [left-handed], ” Ireland maintained, with some emotion. “He wasn’t.... No, he was not.” (p. 45)

 

 

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