Famous Left-Handed People-And My Family- The How and Why
Nadene Goldfoot
Grandfather Nathan Abraham Goldfus/Goldfoot 1st Son, Charles "Haskel" Goldfoot
Below, 2nd son of Nathan and granddaughter
2nd Son of Nathan, Our father, Moses/Morris/Maurice Goldfoot and myself-the Lefty. I was first-born. So was my cousin, Nathan Bernard Goldfoot. He was an only child, below at the table. My brother came along much later. My two children, boy and girl, are both right handed. So is my grandson.
Mom, holding my brother, myself-1942
Besides being Jewish, which my brother and I are, and my cousin, which means we belong to a small population group of 0.02% of the world population, and we Jews are only 2% of the USA population. We belong to only 5% of Jews since we have the Y haplogroup of Q (QBZ67), and we belong to another group as well. We both are left-handed, which happens to only 10% of world population in the first place. Our father's brother's only child was also a lefty. That's three of us born as lefties amidst right handed people. It's our generation and from the two male Goldfoot children that are left-handed. The two sisters did not have left-handed children.
Only about 10 percent of people worldwide are left-handed, experts say. They're more comfortable writing, throwing a ball and doing other manual tasks with their left hand. 10% of .5% of 0.02% is what? A teeny-tiny group of us left-handed Jewish Qs. Good grief!
Our two male 1st cousins, Nate the Lefty-son of my father's brother and Don, right-handed, son of a sister of my father.
Additional information is that my father's youngest sister who had 5 daughters has a grandson who has 2 out of his 3 children, a boy and a girl, who are left handed. As it turns out, the 2 lefties' grandfather's mother, a Nudelman, was also left-handed. The grandmother of these two out of three children is our 1st cousin. Further information just disclosed that another of the 5 sisters did write with her right hand but could do the same with her left as well as other things. In other words, she was ambidextrous with preference being right handed.
Here's former President Obama signing a paper. He's a lefty.
I curve my hand above like Obama, too !
Left handedness is not following a mendal-type law of dominant and recessive genes. Something is figured to trigger the event today, but how could my mother, Mildred and Nate's mother, Helen have hormonal problems at the same time. Nate and I were born 6 months apart. Mildred and Helen were not even remotely related to each other. My brother came along 8 years later and he also was a lefty.
Leonardo Da Vinci. was left-handed. Was Leonardo da Vinci, a Famous Lefty, Actually Ambidextrous? Seemingly, da Vinci was in touch with both hemispheres of his amazing brain. Because da Vinci was forced to use his right hand through right-handed implements, he learned that having the skill to utilize both hands also meant he more equally developed both sides of his brain. He could perceive the world in ways that right handers could not. From engineering and mathematics to invention and cartography, he excelled at numerous things. da Vinci has also came to be recognized as one of the greatest artists of all time.
Harpo born in 1888
Harpo in 1926
So was Harpo Marx., Marx's family was Jewish. His mother was from East Frisia, Germany, and his father, a tailor, was from Alsace, which was part of the Second French Empire at the time the elder Marx was born and for most of his childhood.
Whoopi Goldberg is listed as lefty and has a connection to a Jewish relative-thus the Goldberg surname.
Ted Koppel:broadcasting news journalist; Koppel, an only child, was born in Nelson, England. His parents were German Jews who fled Germany after the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism.
Uri Geller, Israeli-British illusionist, magician, television personality, and self-proclaimed psychic.
Queen Mother: King George VI and the Queen Mother were both left-handed. The Queen Mother didn't pass her left-handedness on to her daughter Queen Elizabeth II.
Prince William is left-handed, but none of his children are.
King George was born left-handed, but he was also trained to write with his right hand. His left-handedness shone through when he played tennis and held the racket in his left hand.
Infanta Elena and Princess Leonor of Spainare left-handed, as well.
But is there any evidence for a trigger with handedness? I couldn't find much research in people, but some interesting studies have been done with chimpanzees.
In chimpanzees, being right handed is about twice as common as being left handed (as opposed to around 9 times as likely in humans). When scientists studied chimpanzees, they found that the chances for having a left-handed baby increased significantly based on birth order. The first and sixth or later babies had a much higher chance of being left-handed than did the middle ones.
What do the first and later pregnancies have in common? They tend to have hormonal variations that don't happen with the middle pregnancies. And this might be the environmental trigger we're looking for.
Chimpanzees are more likely to be left handed if they have older siblings. Via Shutterstock
There is some evidence in humans that birth order may play a role as well. Nothing as clear-cut as we see with chimps but we do know that older mothers tend to have more left handed children. Also, at least with boys, some studies have shown that later kids are more likely to be left-handed.4
So, handedness is most likely due to a combination of genes and environment. Some people have a greater chance of being left-handed but something needs to trigger it.
Remember, the identical twin story argued against genes being the whole story. It also argues that birth order isn't everything either. If it were, then if one identical twin was a lefty, the other would always be one as well.
So at least right now, we don’t have a good answer for the genetics of handedness. It’s a complex trait that isn’t fully understood, and you can’t reliably predict how it will be inherited in a family. But I can say for sure that it is not a simple Mendelian trait!
Moving to Israel in 1980 was a big decision, and one I'm so glad I made. As a 22 year teacher of Elementary education, I became a junior high teacher of Engish as a 2nd language in Safed after a 10 month educational experience in Haifa of which I completed and became a certified Israeli teacher, even passing the Hebrew test by the skin of my teeth actually after breaking my elbow and arm bone just as the 1982 war was about to start. I've written 2 true books and now have been working in 6 blogs; 3 about Israel and 3 about family genealogy. It's all enough to keep me very busy. I've met the best of people this way that I dearly love, while in my home my time is spent with my female Llasa apso, my age in dog years and as spoiled as can be. I swear she understands too much.
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