You probably don’t think about left-handed folks until you have to sit next to a lefty at the dinner table and end up getting elbowed in the ribs. Lefties represent only 10 percent of the world’s population, yet they’ve been such a fascination for so long that study after study has been conducted on what makes them so unique.
But while we now know that lefties are normal folks, history wasn’t always so kind to our left-handed friends. In the Middle Ages, being a leftie was enough to get you accused of being a witch, and in the 18th and 19th centuries, left-handed children were forced to use their right hands in schools, (which was dreadful – have you ever tried switching hands to write? It’s not easy). Those biases persisted well into the 20th century:
