25 amazing facts about lefty's

list of 25 interesting scientific facts related to being a lefty, from the funny to the weird and everything in between.

One really interesting factoid that I picked up was from a scientist who believed that left handed people tended to be more independent as a result of having to adapt to a world which is largely built for right handed individuals.  Here are a few more fascinating pieces of trivia related to being a lefty…

Scientific Left Handed Facts

• Make up between 5% and 10% of the population (depending on who you ask)
• More likely to have allergies
• More prone to migraines
• More likely to be insomniacs
• Use the right side of the brain the most
• Three times more likely to become alcoholics – the right side of the brain has a lower tolerance to alcohol!
• More likely to be on extreme poles of the intelligence scale
• Tend to reach puberty 4 to 5 months later than right handers
• More likely to suffer stuttering and dyslexia
• Twice as likely to be a man
• Better at 3D perception and thinking
• Better at multi-tasking
• Live on average 9 years less than right handed people
• 39% more likely to be homosexual

Interesting Left Handed Trivia

• Make especially good baseball players, tennis players, swimmers, boxers and fencers (almost 40% of the top tennis players are lefties)
• Celebrate left handed day once a year – August 13th – International Left Handers Day
• Draw figures facing to the right
• Recover from strokes faster
• More likely to pursue creative careers
• Of the seven most recent U.S Presidents, 4 have been left handed
• Left handed college graduates go on to become 26% richer than right handed graduates
• On a QWERTY keyboard there are 1447 English words typed solely with the left hand, whilst only 187 are typed with the right hand.

Bizarre Lefty Titbits

• Adjust to seeing underwater quicker
• Less able to roll their tongue than a righty
• Nails grow faster on the left hand than the right (fingerpicking advantage anyone?)

So we’ll live for nine years less than right handed people huh?  Well the way I see it, that’s nine years less squandering my kids’ inheritance money, living in a nursing home where some teenager cleans up my drool and wipes my arse for me – that’s a plus in my book