Greece: The Losing Winner

Greeks were understandably astounded last May when Evanghelos Georgakakis came out ahead of all the other 360 candidates in the Athens bar exams. Reason: Georgakakis, 33, has no eyes, an artificial right hand, and only one finger on his left hand that has any sense of touch. A onetime Cretan shepherd boy who received his disabilities from a German mine explosion in 1944, Georgakakis uses the tip of his tongue to "read" Braille, got through law school by tape-recording and memorizing 60,000 pages of legislation. Highly impressed by his showing, the bar examiners took an unprecedented step: they urged...

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