👋 Happy Friday – and welcome to Edition 100!

One hundred Fridays. Roughly 800 stories. More happy-crying than a wedding open bar. We made it.

When this whole thing started, the pitch was simple: the world is doing better than the news cycle would have you believe, and someone should send you proof every Friday morning. A hundred editions later, we're still at it, and you're still here – which, honestly, is the most smile-worthy data point in the whole archive.

So thank you. Genuinely. For opening these emails, for forwarding them to your mom, for replying when something hits you in the feels. None of this works without you.

Now – to the good news. This week:

Plus much more…

Not a subscriber yet? Sign up here!

It’s not all doom and gloom out there. Here’s some positive news items from publications around the world.

🇺🇸 Queens, New York
Off-Duty Firefighter Smashes Through Sunroof of Submerged Car With a Yeti Cup
When flash floods swamped the Jackie Robinson Parkway last week, off-duty FDNY firefighter Travis Langan spotted school principal Carmen Pinto trapped in a near-fully-submerged car. With the water rising to her sunroof, she handed him the only tool within reach - a Yeti cup He used it to break the glass and pull her out to safety, saving her life. (Read more 👉 ABC7 New York)

🌍 Worldwide
Guinea Worm Cases Drop to Just 10 Worldwide, Down From 3.5 Million
When the Carter Center took over the global eradication campaign in 1986, an estimated 3.5 million people were getting Guinea worm each year across 21 countries. Last year? Ten cases. Total. It's poised to become the second human disease ever wiped out – and the first without a vaccine or drug to do the wiping. (Read more 👉 The Carter Center)

🇺🇸 Cooper City, Florida
Three Teens Stopped to Help With a Flat Tire and Ended Up Saving a Life
Logan Royer, Cody Magrone, and Brody Murray were grabbing food after a fishing trip when they spotted a stranded driver on the roadside. They walked over to help with the tire. Within minutes they realized the 65-year-old was having a heart attack – and one of them was already on the phone with 911. (Read more 👉 Sunny Skyz)

🇺🇸 Washington State
Endangered Butterflies Are Thriving Behind Bars
Inside a greenhouse at a Washington women's prison, incarcerated technicians are hand-raising the Taylor's checkerspot – a butterfly that's lost 97% of its native habitat and would likely be extinct without them. Each larva is raised on its own plant, monitored daily, its growth logged like lab data. The program has released 80,000 caterpillars into the wild so far, and the women earn college credit while they do it. (Read more 👉 Reasons to be Cheerful)

🇦🇷 Iberá National Park, Argentina
First Wild Jaguar Spotted There in 70 Years
Tour guides leading a group through the wetlands in early May spotted a young male jaguar named Ombú resting on the trail – the first confirmed wild jaguar sighting in Iberá since logging and poaching drove the species out in the 1950s. Decades of rewilding work just officially paid off. (Read more 👉 Good Good Good)

🇺🇸 Danville, California
Elementary Schoolers Pitch In to Help Save Jackie and Shadow's Habitat
When fourth and fifth graders at John Baldwin Elementary heard the hunting grounds of America's most-watched bald eagles were about to be paved over for luxury homes, they launched a campaign – bake sales, lemonade stands, and letters to lawmakers. The Friends of Big Bear Valley is now $2.68 million into a $10 million race to buy the land by July 31. Go kids! (Read more 👉 ABC News)

🇨🇦 Bonaventure Island
"Forever Chemicals" in Seabird Eggs Have Plunged 70% Since the 1990s
A 55-year study of northern gannet eggs from North America's largest seabird colony found that the most common PFAS contaminants peaked in the late '90s and have been falling ever since – mirroring the regulatory phaseouts almost line for line. Translation: when we actually pass the rules, the rules actually work. (Read more 👉 The Guardian)

We couldn't fit them all. Here are 14 more good news stories from around the world this May that nobody's talking about. 👉 Read the full roundup

Feel good stories from Happilynews.com guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

The ring was waiting in Malaika Green's pocket. The groom standing across from her had no idea.

Djimon Green has been in love with airplanes since he was six years old, the year of his first flight. By high school he was deep in pilot training. He had his license at 17. By 24, he was wearing a Southwest Airlines captain's uniform. The man flies for a living and would still describe it as a hobby.

When Malaika – a United Airlines flight attendant who met Djimon at a hotel bar during a layover in 2023 – started planning their wedding in Mesa, Arizona, she knew she wanted the ring to mean something. Not "thoughtful" in the abstract. Something only Djimon would fully clock.

So she went looking. She found an Etsy seller who makes jewelry from scrap metal salvaged from retired commercial aircraft. She combed through the listings for a specific donor plane – a Southwest jet decommissioned in June 2022. That's the month Djimon was hired as a Southwest pilot. The plane left service the same month its eventual ring-recipient walked into the building.

She had it forged into a titanium band cut from one of the fan blades.

At the altar, during the ring exchange, she finally told him.

The videographer caught the entire reveal – the slow dawning, the eyes widening, the hand going to his mouth. He's still half-smiling, half-stunned, like he's running the math on what she just said and reaching the same answer twice.

"He had no idea," Malaika said afterward. "It warmed my heart knowing how special he thought the ring was, and that it had a deeper meaning."

The clip went viral within days. The comments are mostly some version of: she gets him.

Which is, when you think about it, what a wedding ring is supposed to say in the first place. Most just don't say it quite this loudly – or with this much titanium.

A unique, sometimes quirky, but always eye-catching photo feature each week.

You've stepped on slime mould a thousand times without knowing it. Photographer Jon Appleyard would like you to stop.

His extreme macro shot of a single mould fruiting body – a purple, thorn-like stem barely tall enough to register without a magnifier – just won the overall prize at BBC Wildlife's 2026 Wildlife Photography Awards. Judges called it "a work of art."

Slime moulds aren't fungi, despite the name and the vibe. Appleyard's photograph zooms so far in that the rest of the planet falls away. What's left looks like a still from a sci-fi film no studio has made yet.

Tees, totes and mugs designed by us, printed on quality kit, and worn by readers who like wearing their optimism on their sleeve. Quite literally. Every order keeps Smileworthy free, ad-free and in your inbox every Friday.

Use code SMILE15 for 15% off — subscribers only. 👉 https://www.thehappilyshop.com/

Start Hunting for "Glimmers"
Most wellness advice tells you to spot your triggers. Therapist Deb Dana, the polyvagal-theory expert who coined the term in her 2018 book The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, thinks we should be doing the opposite: hunting our glimmers – tiny micro-moments that quietly cue your nervous system that you're safe. The dog flopping onto your foot. The first sip of coffee. A stranger holding a door. They're already happening – we're just trained to walk past them.

Try it for a day. Make a mental note every time you catch one. Kurt Vonnegut had a phrase for it: "If this isn't nice, what is?"

Read more 👉 Psychology Today

Sharks are older than trees. Sharks have been around for about 400 million years. Trees? Roughly 350 million.

1851 Sojourner Truth addresses the first Black Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio

1935 Legendary American athlete Jesse Owens equals or breaks four world records in 45 minutes at a Big Ten meet at Ferry Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan; remembered as "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport"

1953 Edmund Hillary (NZ) and Tenzing Norgay (Nepal) are the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest as part of a British expedition

1976 The Who set the record for the loudest concert of all time at 120 decibels at 50 meters at The Valley in Charlton, London

2014 Psy's "Gangnam Style" becomes the first video to reach 2 billion views on YouTube

Feel-good clips are scientifically linked to better mood - consider this your weekend prescription!

The forecast said no rain. Halfway through the ring exchange, the sky disagreed – and instead of running for cover, this couple did something their wedding coordinator definitely didn't suggest!

That’s it for this week. If you liked what you read, why not buy the team a coffee? We’re fuelled by caffeine and a thirst for sharing the most uplifting, positive stories with you, our beloved readers.

And thanks for being part of this and helping us reach hundred editions.

Edition 101 is already in the works – send us the story that made you smile this week, and we might use it.

Until next Friday,
James
Editor, Smileworthy