👋 Happy Friday, dear readers. It's May 1st – the unofficial start of patio season.

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

🇬🇧 Stevenage, UK
New Treatment Restores Six-Year-Old’s Sight
Saffie Sandford was born with a rare genetic condition that would have left her completely blind by 30, until doctors at Great Ormond Street gave her a one-off gene therapy called Luxturna – one eye last April, the other in September. Her mum Lisa says it's "like someone waved a magic wand," and Saffie, a devoted Spider-Man fan, can now go trick-or-treating, scramble across climbing frames and eat dinner out after dark. (Read more 👉 BBC News)

🇺🇸 Summerville, Georgia
Teen Beats Cancer, Then Uses His Make-A-Wish On Strangers
When 14-year-old Jude Baker rang the bell ending two years of brutal Ewing sarcoma treatment, Make-A-Wish Georgia asked him the famous question – and instead of Disney or meeting a celebrity, he asked to feed and clothe the homeless people he'd seen near the hospital during his own worst days. More than 300 people got hot meals, sleeping bags and backpacks. (Read more 👉 Sunny Skyz)

🇩🇪 Erlangen, Germany
A Pair Of $1 Glasses Created By A Math Teacher Have Helped A Million People See
In 2009, Martin Aufmuth read that hundreds of millions of people couldn't afford glasses. He disappeared into his basement and emerged with the EinDollarBrille (One Dollar Glasses) – a spring-steel frame so tough he claims you could drive a jeep over it. Seventeen years later, his non-profit GoodVision has reached more than a million people across 11 countries, helping them see again. (Read more 👉 Happily)

🇺🇸 New York, USA
Restaurateur Invites Homeless People To Sleep And Eat In His Restaurant
Ali Riza Dogan landed in New Jersey from Ankara as a young immigrant who didn't speak English, got lost looking for his uncle, and slept his first American night on the carpet of a boarded-up hotel – and he never forgot it. Now, every Wednesday for the past five or six years, he drives hot food from his Midtown restaurant to Chinatown, and on freezing nights a sign on his door tells anyone outside they're welcome to come in: heat's on till morning. (Read more 👉 TODAY)

🇺🇸 Charlotte, North Carolina
Over 6,500 Volunteers Build 10,000 Beds For Children WHO Don't Have Any
Roughly 140,000 American kids don't have a bed of their own, so volunteers from Lowe's, Bank of America, Honeywell and Rebuilding Together packed into the Charlotte Convention Center and went full assembly line with 200 miles of lumber, 730,000 wood screws and 2,000 gallons of stain. Twenty-four hours later, they'd built 10,027 finished beds, now headed to 110 Sleep In Heavenly Peace chapters across 36 states. (Read more 👉 The Mirror)

🇺🇸 Redmond, Washington
These Fifth Graders Vibe Coded A Real-World Braille Tool — And Wowed Microsoft
A class of ten-year-olds in Washington just built a working accessibility tool that turns any text into a printable, tactile 3D Braille model in seconds – the kind of thing Microsoft researchers normally spend months on. (Read more 👉 GeekWire)

🇺🇸 Denver, Colorado
New Law Bans Pet Store Sales, Encourages Adoption
Colorado Governor Jared Polis has signed the Pistol the Pomeranian Protection Act – named after Majority Leader Monica Duran's beloved puppy mill survivor – which bars Colorado pet stores from selling, leasing or auctioning dogs and cats, sending future buyers to shelters and reputable breeders instead. The bill signing doubled as an adoption event, with Humane Colorado bringing puppies along for the ceremony. (Read more 👉 Fox21 News)

🇺🇸 Walla Walla, Washington
Scientists Just Turned Sewage Into 99% Pure Natural Gas
Washington State University researchers fed sewage sludge from a small treatment plant into a new process that cooks it at 175°C, depressurises it fast, and lets a patented "workhorse" microbe finish the job – producing renewable natural gas that's 99% pure methane and almost three times the energy output of standard wastewater treatment. Lead researcher Birgitte Ahring reckons up to 80% of sewage sludge can now be turned into something genuinely valuable. (Read more 👉 Happily)

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

Khari Arnold started small. Just a dad and his baby daughter, Araya, in the kids' section of an Atlanta library, working their way through the picture books. He'd read to her, she'd chew on the corners, and they'd go home. He kept it up for a year before he realised he might be onto something other fathers needed too.

So he posted an Instagram reel. A few dads showed up the next time. Then a few more. Today, the "Library Dads" – or, more formally, their Library Link-Ups – are a regular Atlanta gathering of fathers and their kids, working through stacks of books together, breaking for what the group affectionately calls "tickle time," and gradually building something that doesn't really exist anywhere else: a brotherhood organised around children's literature.

"It's one thing to have men in your circle," Arnold likes to say. "It's another thing to have men in your corner."

The numbers behind why this matters are sobering. More than half of American adults read below a sixth-grade level. A landmark Ohio State study found that a child read just one book a day will hear roughly 300,000 more words by the age of five than a child who isn't. Arnold's daughter Araya hit a working vocabulary of 250 words by 18 months. He didn't need a study to convince him.

But ask the dads themselves and the literacy mission is only half of it. Cassell Scott turned up recently with his three-year-old, Amale, and found something he hadn't quite known he was looking for. "It was eye-opening to see other dads like myself who are engaged," he said. "Actually motivating, as well."

Georgia lawmakers just passed the Early Literacy Act of 2026, funding literacy coaches and dyslexia screening across elementary schools. That's the policy answer. The Library Dads have a simpler one: turn up, sit down with a kid, and open a book. The rest takes care of itself.

Check them out on socials: https://www.instagram.com/thelibrarydads/

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

When a road was widened through North Sumatra's rainforest in 2024 – a vital lifeline for remote communities, but a brutal one for the wildlife living above it – a population of around 350 critically endangered Sumatran orangutans found themselves cut clean in half. So conservationists from the Sumatran Orangutan Society and Tangguh Hutan Khatulistiwa got to work and strung up five canopy bridges across the gap, hoping the apes might one day take the hint.

Gibbons and Macaques used them. But the orangutans, famously contemplative, took their time. Then last week, for the first time anywhere in the world, a Sumatran orangutan was filmed crossing one – picking her way across the rope bridge with the calm competence of a commuter. SOS chief executive Helen Buckland called it a "huge milestone." We're calling it the slowest, most dignified victory lap in conservation history.

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The Stoics had a strange-sounding trick for happiness: spend a few minutes a day picturing your life without the things you love most. Your morning coffee. Your partner. Your ability to walk to the shop. They called it premeditatio malorum – the premeditation of evils – and modern psychology backs them up. Gratitude studies consistently show that briefly imagining the loss of something good makes us measurably more grateful for it when we look up and find it still there. The catch is that it has to be brief and deliberate – not catastrophizing. Two minutes, then back to your life. The coffee will taste sweeter.

The voice actor behind Bugs Bunny was allergic to carrots. Mel Blanc had to chew and spit them out during recording sessions.

1789 George Washington is inaugurated as the first President of the United States of America at Federal Hall in NYC

1840 "Penny Black," the world's first adhesive postage stamp is issued by the United Kingdom

1931 The Empire State Building opens in New York City as the world's tallest building until the World Trade Center surpasses it in 1970

1937 Pan Am operates the first scheduled commercial transpacific flight

1990 Wrecking cranes begin tearing down the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate

Which three letters come next in this sequence:

pes · gua · luj · nuj · yam · rpa · ?

Answer below.

Layken, Liam and Lane – ages 10, 8 and 2 – had been desperately hoping their newest sibling would be a baby sister, and mom Madesta had kept the gender a secret all the way to the birth so they could find out for themselves. The boys filed in wearing matching "Big Brother" t-shirts, made their guesses, and started peeling back the blanket to see whether they'd be unwrapping pink or blue.

*Studies show that watching heartwarming videos can boost your mood. So sit back and start your weekend positively - doctors orders!

🧠 Brain Teaser Answer

Ram.

These are the first three letters of the months in reverse order.

Therefore, RAM are the first three letters of March.