As of 2012, six of the past 14 U.S. presidents were left-handed: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover. Ronald Reagan was said to have been ambidextrous, which would mean that half of the presidents since 1929 were left-handed, if Reagan is counted. Although it's difficult to know for sure how many presidents were left-handed before that, other presidents that are said to have been able to write with their left hands include James Garfield, who was said to be ambidextrous; and Thomas Jefferson, who was right-hand dominant but was able to write legibly with his left hand as well.
More about left-handedness:
- Only about 10 percent of people are left-handed. This percentage appears to have been fairly stable for at least the past 500,000 years.
- A Johns Hopkins study found that college-educated left-handed people tend to earn 10 to 15 percent more than their right-handed peers. The correlation did not appear in people who had less than a college degree, though.
- Other left-handed people in U.S. government or politics have included Benjamin Franklin, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Ross Perot and John McCain.