Good morning.

Today is Thursday, August 13, the 225th day of 2026, with 140 days remaining in the year.

And today we turn things around.

Literally.

August 13 is International Left-Handers Day, celebrating the people navigating a world in which scissors, notebooks, desks, tools, can openers, computer mice and countless other everyday objects have traditionally been designed with the other hand in mind.

The history has two threads. An earlier August 13 observance is associated with Dean R. Campbell and Lefthanders International in 1976. The organization behind today's International Left-Handers Day says the modern worldwide annual campaign was launched by the Left-Handers Club on August 13, 1992, to celebrate left-handedness while drawing attention to the advantages, disadvantages and everyday design problems left-handed people encounter.

Their invitation to right-handers is wonderfully simple:

Try doing ordinary things left-handed.

Suddenly a mundane object can become a lesson in design.

And perhaps that is today's first little piece of wisdom:

Change hands, and you change perspective.

🥩 National Filet Mignon Day celebrates the famously tender cut taken from the smaller end of the beef tenderloin.

🥂 National Prosecco Day raises a sparkling glass to summer. The observance was created by Riondo Prosecco and entered the National Day Calendar in 2016.

🇹🇳 National Women's Day in Tunisia commemorates the country's landmark Code of Personal Status, promulgated on August 13, 1956, which introduced major reforms affecting women and family law.

So today's menu apparently calls for left-handed steak and Prosecco.

History can be demanding. 🍽️

After a devastating siege, Tenochtitlan, capital of the Mexica Empire, fell on August 13, 1521.

Hernán Cortés's relatively small Spanish force did not accomplish the conquest alone. It fought alongside a much larger coalition of Indigenous allies who had their own conflicts with Mexica power.

Cuauhtémoc, the final Mexica emperor, was captured.

The fall of one of the world's great cities became a turning point in the Spanish conquest and in the history of the Americas.

During the French Revolution, Louis XVI and the French royal family were arrested and imprisoned.

Five months later, the king would go to the guillotine.

The monarchy that once appeared immovable was disappearing beneath his feet.

Inventor William Gray received a patent connected with the coin-operated telephone.

Long before a smartphone could swallow an entire paycheck, the telephone had figured out how to ask for money one coin at a time. ☎️🪙

Opha May Johnson became the first woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps.

She joined more than a century before today's debates about the expanding roles of women in military service.

Some doors do not swing open.

Someone has to push them.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton recorded “Hound Dog.”

Four years later, Elvis Presley's version would become one of the defining recordings of early rock and roll.

But the song had already growled.

And Big Mama growled first. 🎙️

In the early hours of August 13, East German authorities began sealing the boundary between East and West Berlin.

At first the barrier was largely barbed wire and barricades.

Concrete would follow.

The structure that became the Berlin Wall would divide families, neighborhoods and a city for 28 years, becoming one of the most recognizable symbols of the Cold War.

The wall would finally open on November 9, 1989.

But on this August morning in 1961, Berliners awoke to discover that geography had changed overnight.

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were honored with a massive ticker-tape parade through New York City following humanity's first crewed lunar landing.

From the Moon to Broadway Canyon confetti in less than a month.

Not a bad commute. 🌕🎉

The Summer Olympic Games opened in Athens, bringing the modern Games back to Greece, the country where the ancient Olympic tradition began.

For a few weeks, the world's roads again led to Athens. 🏛️🔥

Look closely and today's history seems to keep returning to boundaries.

A world designed for the right hand.

The destruction of one empire and rise of another.

A monarchy losing its power.

A woman entering a military institution that had never admitted one before.

A concrete wall dividing East from West.

Human beings leaving Earth and walking on another world.

Again and again:

Sometimes we build it.

Sometimes we defend it.

Sometimes we discover that it was never as permanent as it looked.

And sometimes all it takes to see the world differently…

is to use the other hand.

👈🌎

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