👋 Happy Friday.

June tends to be the month where the big news goes quiet and the small, lovely stuff finally gets a turn. Lucky for us, the small lovely stuff is the whole job here.

Here's what's waiting for you this week:

Let’s jump in.

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

🇺🇸 Lakewood, Ohio
A Paper Airplane Got One Girl A Reply From Taylor Swift
Eight-year-old Madeline Glynn heard her new neighbor playing guitar on his porch and wanted to make a request – but didn't want to barge into his yard. So she folded a note into a paper airplane and sailed it over the fence. The neighbor, full-time musician Ethan Hayes, played the song, filmed it, and the clip reached millions – including Taylor Nation, who mailed Ethan a guitar with a handwritten note from Taylor Swift herself. (Read more 👉 WKYC)

🇺🇸 Minnesota
A Cancer-Killing Virus Just Stopped Pancreatic Tumors In Their Tracks
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest diagnoses in medicine, which makes this worth sitting up for. An engineered virus, injected straight into the tumor, multiplies only inside cancer cells – making them burst and die while leaving healthy tissue untouched. In the first three patients to receive it during early trials, the tumors stopped growing. All three are alive and stablized, one of them a full year on. Researchers are now testing higher doses - with hope growing. (Read more 👉 Happily)

🇺🇸 Nashville, Tennessee
Hero British Cop ‘Saves Life’ of American Officer While on Holiday in Nashville
Sergeant Taylor Johanson, 34, had been out of the Nashville airport roughly ten minutes when he spotted a struggle on the I-440 off-ramp. Officer Peter Kinsey was pinned to the ground, being headbutted, bitten, and punched – and the attacker had already gotten a finger into the trigger guard and fired a round from Kinsey's holstered gun. Johanson jumped out, tackled the man, and held him until Kinsey could taser and cuff him. Nashville's police chief put it plainly: he likely saved the officer's life. (Read more 👉 Good News Network)

🇮🇪 Ireland
Meet the 18-year-old Whose Prize-winning Invention Takes on the Microplastics Emergency
Microplastics have turned up in drinking water, soil, and even breast milk – easy to detect, maddeningly hard to remove. Ayra Satheesh, 18, built something that does both jobs at once: a plant-based biodegradable plastic that breaks down safely while releasing enzymes that keep dismantling existing microplastics in soil, fresh water, and salt water. It just won her the European title in the Earth Prize, the world's largest environmental competition, plus funding to scale it up. (Read more 👉 Euronews)

🇺🇸 Eastern Seaboard
The Rarest Whales In The Atlantic Just Had Their Best Baby Year Since 2009
North Atlantic right whales are among the most endangered large animals on the planet, with every birth genuinely mattering. This season they delivered 23 calves – the most in a single season since 2009. Even more encouraging: the gaps between births are shrinking, which scientists read as an early sign of real recovery rather than a one-off good year. (Read more 👉 Happily)

🇺🇸 Warwick, Rhode Island
After Losing His Wife, He Found Healing Turning Trash Into Treasure
After losing his wife of decades, retired Rhode Islander John "Jack" Burnett needed a reason to keep moving. He found it in other people's trash. His front lawn on Norwood Avenue is now a rotating display of bikes, furniture, and tools he's rescued, fixed up, and sells cheap to neighbors who need them. A customer shared his story on Facebook and the messages flooded in – but it's the people who pull over to chat that he treasures most. (Read more 👉 Happily)

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

On January 1, 2021, Ralph Hartnagel decided he was going to run. Every day. Not because his doctors recommended it, but because he'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and running made the dark days lighter. Ralph was that kind of man – the type who could find the upside in almost anything, including a fight he was statistically unlikely to win.

The streak lasted five months. Then his body wouldn't let him anymore.

So his son picked it up.

Michael Hartnagel, now 31, didn't let his father's streak die when Ralph did, in September 2023, at 64. He kept running. Every single day. That streak is now closing in on 2,000 consecutive days, and somewhere in there it stopped being about a promise and started being about survival – his own.

Two days after Ralph passed, Michael ran 157 miles across Indiana and raised more than $50,000 for the cancer nonprofit he'd founded. Then he ran 12 marathons in 12 months, one at each of 12 cancer care centers. Then he started doing Ironmans, because apparently grief that big needs somewhere enormous to go.

But the part that undoes people isn't the mileage. It's the shoes.

For the first mile and the last mile of every major race he runs, Michael stops and changes into his father's old running shoes. Just those two miles. The start, and the finish. The places where it's hardest and where it means the most.

This past March, at Ironman 70.3 in Oceanside, California, his cousin Maggie filmed him doing it before the final stretch.

The clip went viral – millions of people watching a man lace up a dead man's shoes and run anyway.

Ralph never got to finish his streak. But his son makes sure he crosses every line with him.

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

When Kim Rohlf decided to retire after 35 years of teaching, she didn't want to hand her last class of second-graders a generic goodbye card. So she picked up a needle.

Over months of evenings, the Westwood Elementary teacher in Ankeny, Iowa hand-sewed a quilt for every single student – and no two are the same. Each one was designed around the individual kid it was made for: their favorite colors, their obsessions, the things that make them them. A child who loves dinosaurs got dinosaurs. A child who loves space got stars.

One of her students, a second-grader named Gabrielle, summed up the magic better than any adult could. You can spot your own personality, she said, stitched right into the fabric.

Thirty-five years of teaching, ending not with a speech but with a stack of quilts each warm enough to last a childhood.

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.

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Get Good At Problems (It's A Skill, Not A Personality)

We tend to treat dealing with hard times as something you either have a knack for or you don't. Harvard happiness researcher Arthur Brooks says that's exactly backwards. Drawing on the Harvard Study of Adult Development – an 85-year-long look at what actually makes people happy as they age – Brooks found the happiest, healthiest people all shared one underrated habit: they were skilled problem-solvers. In most cases, they’d simply built a reliable, repeatable way to handle whatever cropped up – therapy, journaling, prayer, meditation, a trusted friend on speed-dial. The takeaway is to pick your method now, before you need it. A problem you've practiced for is half-solved already.

A flock of ravens is called a "conspiracy." And honestly, if you've ever seen a group of them staring at you from a fence, you'd agree.

1929 Vatican City becomes a sovereign state

1940 British complete the "Miracle of Dunkirk" by evacuating 338,226 Allied troops from France via a flotilla of over 800 vessels, including Royal Navy destroyers, merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft, and even lifeboats

1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey, London, England

1965 The Supreme Court of the United States decides on Griswold v. Connecticut, effectively legalizing the use of contraception by married couples

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

Emily Whitlock had a secret. Reunited with her closest grade-school friends on a girls' trip to Fort Myers – their first time all together since her 2024 wedding – she'd planned the perfect reveal: gather everyone for a "group photo," then surprise them with her baby scan. It was a great plan. It lasted about four seconds. Because the moment Emily's news landed, a second announcement followed. Then a third!

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 don’t forget to share with your friends and family to brighten their day, too.

Have a great weekend!

~ Team Happily 😊