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This week: strangers packed a Melbourne chapel for a man they'd never met – after his family in Ireland couldn't get there.

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

🇦🇺 Melbourne, Australia
His Family Couldn't Make It to His Funeral – So Strangers Filled the Chapel
When 88-year-old Michael Purcell's loved ones in Ireland were grounded by flight chaos from the Middle East conflict, his Melbourne funeral home put out a call: come say goodbye. So many people turned up the chapel hit capacity. Some were turned away. Others lined the road as a guard of honour for a man they'd never met. (Read more 👉 Sunny Skyz)

🇰🇭 Cambodia
A Minesweeping Rat Just Got His Own Statue
Magawa the African giant pouched rat sniffed out 100 landmines during his career – clearing 1.5 million square feet of land. Cambodia just unveiled a stone memorial in his honour. Fun fact: he could search a tennis court in 30 minutes. A human with a metal detector? Four days. (Read more 👉 Good News Network)

🇺🇸 Rhode Island, USA
Someone Stole $20 From His Tip Jar – Then His Community Showed Up With $1,400
Michael Coyne, 30, has autism and co-owns a coffeehouse with his mom. But when a thief cleaned out their tip jar, his mom posted a video – and strangers, regulars and the mayor started streaming in with cash. (Read more 👉 Today)

🇺🇸 Michigan, USA
An Applebee's Manager Sheltered 50 People as a Tornado Hit Her Restaurant
Aubrey McKenzie spotted the funnel cloud, herded everyone into the windowless prep kitchen, then ran back outside to drag in a man, his dog and a teenager from the parking lot. Glass shattered, ears popped. But not a single person was hurt thanks to her heroic actions (Read more 👉 People)

🇯🇵 Japan
Old Diapers Are Getting a Second Life – and Yes, as New Diapers
Japan now produces more adult diapers than baby ones. So a world-first pilot project is turning all those used diapers into somethign useful - more diapers. By shredding, washing and recycling used ones back into fresh diapers using an ozone sterilisation process billions of diapers are being prevented from ending up in landfill each year. (Read more 👉 Japan Times)

🌍 Worldwide
Renewables Just Hit 49.4% of the World's Electricity Capacity
Nearly half of all installed electricity capacity on the planet is now renewable. Solar alone added a record 511 gigawatts in 2025 – six times the growth in fossil fuels over the same period. (Read more 👉 Reuters)

🌍 Worldwide
WHO Just Made It Way Easier to Catch TB Early
New portable tests run on battery power, cost less than half of existing tools and deliver results in under an hour. The WHO also approved tongue swabs for the first time – opening up testing for people who couldn't be screened before. (Read more 👉 WHO)

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

The binder arrived when Matthew Shifrin was 13.

His babysitter, a family friend named Lilya Finkel, had spent weeks translating a Lego Middle Eastern palace's visual instructions into braille – every step, every brick placement, every connection point typed out so Shifrin could follow along with his fingers.

It was the first Lego set he ever built alone.

"I was completely in control of the whole building process," he said from his home in Newton, Massachusetts, where a Statue of Liberty figurine and NASA's Apollo Saturn V rocket sit among dozens of completed builds. "I knew where the pieces went and I was able to learn about the world around me."

Shifrin, now 28, has been blind since birth. He's also an actor, composer and opera singer. But the thing that's quietly reshaped thousands of lives started with that binder – and what came after Finkel died.

He wanted to honour her. So he turned their shared project into Bricks for the Blind, a nonprofit with 30 sighted writers and blind testers producing free, downloadable building guides for anyone with vision loss. More than 540 sets are covered so far, and around 3,000 builders have used them from across the US to Australia.

In 2017, Shifrin approached Lego's headquarters in Denmark about accessibility. The company listened. By 2019, they'd launched audio and braille instructions. A year later came Lego Braille Bricks, with studs shaped into letters, numbers and symbols.

The messages Shifrin gets now are the kind that stay with you. Blind grandparents who can finally build alongside their grandkids. Parents who'd been shut out of the one activity their sighted children loved most.

Daniel Millan, 31, lost his sight in 2024 after a tumour crushed his optic nerves. On his anniversary, he built a Lego rose with his wife using Shifrin's instructions. "Being able to do it independently, it's freedom," Millan said. "It's not about what I can't do anymore. It's more about what I can do."

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

The shortlist for this year's World Food Photography Awards is out – and it's wild. We're not talking about close-ups of avocado toast. We're talking stacks of biscuits shot from below like a Manhattan skyline, with an actual plane flying overhead. (That's Czech photographer Kveta Trckova's entry, and yes, it's as ridiculous and brilliant as it sounds.)

Then there's Sebastian Kahnert's overhead shot of a bustling market kitchen – dozens of cooks working elbow-to-elbow in a kaleidoscope of pots, bowls and brightly coloured ingredients. It looks like organised chaos. The kind of place where something delicious is definitely happening.

Twenty photographers made the cut across categories spanning street food to fine dining, and every single image makes you want to eat, travel or both.

See all 20 👉 PetaPixel

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Your hobbies are secretly protecting your brain. Neuroscientists say the best thing you can do for long-term brain health isn't a supplement or an app – it's having hobbies. Activities that combine physical movement, mental challenge and social connection tend to be best. Dancing, volunteering, learning an instrument, even knitting – they all strengthen your brain's ability to build new neural pathways. (Source: Good Housekeeping)

The total weight of all ants on Earth roughly equals the total weight of all humans. There are an estimated 20 quadrillion of them, and collectively they weigh about 80 million tonnes.

📰 This Week In History

1858 Big Ben, a 13.76-tonne bell, is recast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry

1906 World's first animated cartoon is released, "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" by J. Stuart Blackton

1948 World Health Organization is formed by the United Nations

1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into space and orbit Earth, aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft

1968 US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the 1968 Civil Rights Act

1969 The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1

2012 "The Lion King" becomes highest grossing Broadway show, overtaking "The Phantom of the Opera"

Can you find the country hidden in the following sentence:

A popular newspaper printed part of a page that pointed out that port officials use a pencil, not a pen, when they prepare paper updates to their port reports.

Answer at the bottom of the newsletter

Four-year-old Miller wanted a brother. What he got was another sister – and the internet got the funniest gender reveal reaction of the year.

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

🧠 Brain Teaser Answer

Answer

Peru.

A popular newspaper printed part of a page that pointed out that port officials use a pencil, not a pen, when they prepare paPER Updates to their port reports.