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Left-Handedness The 10 percent of human beings who are left-handed have long been considered unlucky, deceptive, or even evil in cultures the world over. During the Spanish Inquisition the Catholic Church condemned those who used their left hand. Zulu tribesmen of the 1800s placed the left hands of children into holes filled with boiling water to discourage their use. The nineteenth-century criminologist and white supremacist Cesare Lombroso lent dangerous authority to the long-standing social stigma, claiming a scientific connection between left-handedness, moral degeneracy, and the “savage races.” No wonder schoolteachers continued discouraging it in students, often through physical abuse. J. W. Conway’s 1935 On Curing the Disability and Disease of Left-Handedness argued that being a lefty was a handicap in a world that was industrializing and standardizing. Handicap? Turns out being a southpaw is a fast lane to the West Wing. Seven of our last fifteen presidents—that’s a whopping 47 percent—have been left-handed. I’m not sure what that means but I’m sure a CNN panel will eventually sort it out.
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