Individual stories of hope and miracle color in this year's review of the most popular good news on the internet. There are some that remind us the planet is changing for the better, and others that capture the goodness in people.

From a potential treatment to one of the world's rarest and deadliest genetic diseases, to the recovery of species extinct in the wild, the list will hopefully having you pen New Year's resolutions fit for a better world; a more positive world.

After selling his company for eight figures to a competitor, one Canadian entrepreneur is using his profit to build a community of tiny homes for those who need it most.

In the New Brunswick city of Fredericton, his factory is now churning out 1 tiny home every 4 business days in a bid to create the 12 Neighbours gated community of 99 homes and an enterprise center to give homeless Frederictonians a real second chance.

12 Neighbours founder Marcel LeBrun had a successful social media monitoring company which he sold to an American competitor, and is now putting his new money where his mouth was—every time he used to say something needed to be done about the homelessness problem in the city. READ more… 

In a massive and historic conservation success story, eighteen takahē birds have been released into the wilds of a nature reserve on Lake Wakatipu.

This is hoped to be followed by seven more in October, and another 10 in the early months of next year as this rediscovered wonder continues its long road to recovery into the third separate breeding population in the wild.

The automobile was still a novel sight in London when the takahē was declared extinct.

This iridescent flightless bird is a symbol of New Zealand's unique prehistoric past, but it evolved on an island without mammals, and with their invasive introduction came what might have been the bird's ultimate demise. READ more… 

Construction of a massive municipal park—over 20 years in the making, is finally underway in the city of Irvine.

They say if California became its own country, it would have one of the world's largest economies. The new Great Park of Irvine is a reflection of the always lofty ambitions of the state, and is expected to dwarf Central Park by more than 500 acres.

It was on May 23rd this year that the "Great Park Project" broke ground on the long-derelict El Toro Marine Corps Base, 21 years after voters approved a ballot measure ordering the state to create a park on the site.

Expected to take another 10 years to complete, the park will span 1,300 acres and include several museums, an amphitheater, a veterans memorial garden, an aquatics center, a sports complex, and not one but two lakes. READ more…

A man of science locked himself in a 592-square-foot underwater research station for 100 days to document the effects of pressurization on the human body.

Now, having emerged from his submerged experiment, scientists studying those effects have discovered a shocking change in the man's body—he's 10 years younger.

The man, Joe Dituri, a former US Navy diver and expert in biomedical engineering, had experienced a 20% growth in the lengths of his telomeres.

Telomeres shorten as we age, exposing the DNA to damage, and many longevity programs today focus on halting that loss. READ more… 

The walls of a "secret" underground room discovered in 1975, covered in sketches by the persecuted Michelangelo, are now being unveiled to the public for the first time.

The Italian Renaissance master sculptor who carved David and decorated the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel hid in the tiny chamber for about two months in 1530 while evading a death sentence ordered by Pope Clement VII.

The pope, who was a member of the powerful Medici family, was enraged at the artist for aiding a rebellion against their reign, the same family whose magnificent tombs Michelangelo carved in the chapel just above his hiding place. READ more… 

It's not every day one reads that a young black man's day was made after police officers were called to the scene.

That boy's day might have been ruined in the Georgia town of Hapeville, where the unnamed lad was going door to door asking if there were any yard work that needed doing.

His hope was to save up money mowing lawns and trimming hedges to be able to afford a PlayStation 5, but of the neighbors had other ideas—specifically, picking up the phone and calling the police, and asking for him to be removed from the area.

Officer Colleran of the City of Hapeville Police Department was dispatched to the area where he quickly made contact with the boy, whom he described as "polite, respectful, and truthful." READ more… 

It turns out that Saturn isn't the only married planet in the solar system. A European telescope has found a new dwarf planet right here at home, and it too has a ring.

The largest object found to orbit our sun since Pluto was discovered in 1930, Quaoar is the third-largest dwarf planet or planetoid of the 3,000 that orbit the sun out beyond Neptune.

But Quaoar's is unique because it breaks a longstanding principle in astronomy that details when disks of dust and debris will inevitably coalesce and form a moon.

"As a result of our observations, the classical notion that dense rings survive only inside the Roche limit of a planetary body must be thoroughly revised." READ more… 

Vitamin B2, or riboflavin, is a key compound in energy metabolism, cellular respiration, and antibody production, and in the case of a 1-year-old baby from California, perhaps the reason he was able to recover from Mitchell Syndrome.

If that disease sounds unfamiliar to you, that's because it's one of the rarest diseases known to medicine. There have been just 20 recorded cases of this genetic disease, and it was only named back in 2019.

"At the time, the hospital were only aware of three patients with the disorder, who had all passed away, that was incredibly hard to hear," said Kristen. "It wasn't until weeks later that I started asking more questions."

In the course of that asking she found the Mitchell and Friends Foundation, set up after the death of Mitchell Herndon, the first recorded death by this disease in 2019.

The foundation had detailed records of all 20 known patients, some of whom were still alive, and they shared with Kristen that vitamin B2 seemed to have some positive effect for ameliorating the worst of the disease. READ more… 

A Philippine spotted deer, one of the world's rarest animals, has been born to the delight of conservationists at Chester Zoo in England.

The adorable fawn was born in September weighing 4.4 pounds (2kg). Now standing 12 inches tall (30cm), he has taken his first steps outdoors in their new enclosure alongside his doting parents—Nova and Cosmos.

As part of a special breeding program, the birth is said to provide a much-needed boost to an ultra-rare species classified as ‘highly endangered' in the wild. As a result of conservation efforts, however, 32 Philippine spotted deer were safely reintroduced into a protected nature reserve in 2020.

"Since then, a number of births in the wild has almost doubled the population and we're very happy to report that they are thriving." READ more… 

When 3-year-old Waylon Saunders arrived at the hospital, he was already legally dead and had been for a while.

Found face-down in an icy backyard swimming pool, the Ontario toddler's body temperature was so low that paramedics' thermometers couldn't get a reading, and he had no pulse.

Nevertheless, a team at Charlotte Eleanor Englehart Hospital in Petrolia, Ontario performed CPR for 3 hours without stopping, while simultaneously using other methods to warm his frozen body.

If one didn't know anything about CPR, someone watching the game or watching little Waylon be rushed into the hospital might have been certain they were never going to wake up. Movies and TV either show CPR working after less than a minute, or never working, but in reality CPR can revive people who have had their heart stopped for tens of minutes.

Waylon's mother Gillian Burnett said the team holds a piece of her heart for all time for their determination. READ more… 

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