👋 Happy Friday!

Go ahead and pencil in August 2044. That's the next time there’s a full solar eclipse anywhere over the lower 48, which meant Wednesday’s cool event belonged to Europe. In northern Spain and Iceland, they had the best views, achieving ‘totality’. Up in the northeast US, things were slightly less impressive - we only got a modest nibble out of the lunchtime sun, but it was still an excuse to dig the cardboard glasses back out of the drawer again (and skip some work!)

Right, let’s jump right in to a fresh batch of good news!👇

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

⌨️ Canada | Mom Tattoos a Working Keyboard on Her Forearm So Her Nonverbal Son Always Has a Voice
A dead tablet battery in the middle of dinner left 11-year-old Hunter with no way to order, so he flipped over the paper alphabet his mother had drawn and sketched his own keyboard from memory. Jessica Fletcher had that keyboard inked permanently onto her forearm, letters and an "I heart you" button included, and tattoo artists around the world are now offering to do the same for other parents free.
(Read more 👉 Today)

🚂 Florida | Stranger Sprints Across the Tracks to Lift a Crossing Gate Off a Trapped Car
A crossing arm dropped onto Debbie Spoelstra's car in Hobe Sound and snagged on her antenna, pinning her on the rails with a train already visible. Josiah Baur, 23, left his own vehicle where it stood, ran to the gate and hauled it up with both hands, freeing her to reverse clear with seconds to spare.
(Read more 👉 WSBTV)

🥾 Washington | Spokane Bootmaker Hands Out $625 Wildland Boots to Firefighters Whose Own Have Melted
With the Spokane Complex fires having destroyed more than 900 structures, JK Boots threw open its headquarters as a recharge station for crews coming off the line and started giving away handmade wildland boots, aiming for 50 pairs and blowing through that inside days. One firefighter had been borrowing a friend's pair a size and a half too small after the soles came off his own.
(Read more 👉 Good Good Good)

🐈 England | Blind Therapy Cat Donates Blood to Save a Kitten Vets Had Almost Given Up On
An 11-week-old tabby found near death on the streets of Bradford had collapsed from anemia so severe that vets needed a donor within hours. The rescue's blind resident therapy cat, Carrots, turned out to be the match, and inside two days of the transfusion the kitten had regained more than 20% of his body weight.
(Read more 👉 BBC)

⛳ Virginia | High School Golf Team Saves Family From Capsized Kayak
A splash and a small boy's scream cut across Lake Culpeper in the middle of Eastern View High School's golf tryouts. Three players swam out while teammates called 911, bringing two adults and a young child who couldn't swim back to a steep, boulder-lined shore before first responders arrived.
(Read more 👉 WBSTV)

🥖 Rhode Island | Thieves Took Her Farm Stand at 2 A.M. A Stranger Rebuilt It From the Original Blueprints
A brand-new sourdough stand vanished from the end of a Rhode Island driveway hours before its Fourth of July debut, loaded onto the roof of an SUV and caught on a neighbor's security camera. A construction company owner who had never met baker Katrina Blancaflor saw her post about the theft, got hold of her husband's original blueprints, and built her a replacement for nothing.
(Read more 👉 Sunny Skyz)

🥣 Oklahoma | A Spilled Box of Froot Loops Started a Six-Year Movement With Its Own Resource Center
Delivering groceries in Muskogee during the pandemic, Alan Thompson dropped a bag, and a boy the family called Red danced for two solid minutes over the cereal that fell out. Thompson asked his town to leave donations on his porch instead of sending money, and six years on, the Miracle Crew runs a center connecting people with everything from groceries to mental health support.
(Read more 👉 Sunny Skyz)

😴 USA | FDA Approves the First Narcolepsy Drug That Treats the Cause, Not the Symptoms
Narcolepsy type 1 affects roughly 1 in 2,000 Americans and comes from the loss of brain cells that produce orexin, the messenger that governs wakefulness. Orzeyful, approved August 5, activates that same receptor directly, and across two trials of 273 adults patients stayed awake longer during the day and saw a meaningful drop in cataplexy episodes.
(Read more 👉 FDA)

🐢 Georgia | Loggerhead Turtles Set a Nesting Record 37 Years in the Making
Georgia's Atlantic beaches logged 4,110 loggerhead nests this season, edging past the 4,071 recorded in 2022 for the highest count since anyone started counting in 1989. The state was down to 358 nests in 2004, before dawn beach patrols and turtle-excluder devices on shrimp trawlers turned the line around.
(Read more 👉 GNN)

🦎 New Hampshire | Volunteers Have Carried Salamanders Across the Road by Hand for Years. Tunnels Are Coming
Every spring in Keene, rare Jefferson complex salamanders cross two roads to reach their breeding wetlands, escorted by volunteers with flashlights on rainy nights known locally as Big Nights. The city is designing underpasses to take over the job, modeled on a Vermont pair that cut amphibian deaths by 80% and also produced thousands of camera-trap photos of small mammals, plus one very surprised bear.
(Read more 👉 Good Good Good)

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

Brianna Black has a theory about what actually helps her daughter following a devastating diagnosis - and it isn't on her medicine chart.

Twins Maverick and Millie are three years old, and for the first three years of their lives they were never apart. Then, on January 22, Millie was diagnosed with high-risk B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia - and their little worlds were turned upside down. The first hospital admission ran for fourteen days and that was the first separation the girls had ever experienced, making it doubly tough.

The MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children's Hospital is nearly three hours away from their home in Little River, South Carolina, and that distance was heartbreaking for the two. It’s too far to make the trip daily, so the sisters only see each other on FaceTime, which works about as well as you'd expect for two three-year-olds used to finishing each other’s sentences. When Millie is feeling up to it, though, Maverick rides along to the weekly clinic appointment, six hours in the car round trip, and they spend it chatting and singing.

But, according to their parents, the multiple an dprolonged admissions since January have taken their toll. Days at a time, over and over, without seeing each other.

So when Maverick finally got to see her sister in person during their latest reunion, mom Brianna recorded it - and it has captured hearts online.

"Being together is the best form of medicine for Millie," Brianna said. "She will have days that she is very down but the second her sister arrives, everything changes."

"It brought me to tears, I'm so grateful that they have each other."

She shared the video, and the response caught her off guard. "We get messages daily of people letting us know that they are praying for our family."

There's a lot of hospital still ahead. Another six months of admissions and procedures, then eighteen months or more of chemotherapy. But Brianna wants people to know that pediatric cancer draws less than 4% of the federal cancer research budget.

Meanwhile, the most effective mood boost anyone has found is still Maverick arriving by elevator to give her sister a loving hug.

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

Believe it or not that is a four-story government office.

The National Fisheries Development Board's headquarters sits beside an expressway in Hyderabad, India, clad in stainless steel panels, lifted off the ground on pale blue stilts, with two round windows for eyes and a left pectoral fin that doubles as the awning over the front steps. Google lists the address as, simply, Fish Building. At night, blue-purple spotlights make the whole thing appear to swim through the city.

It opened in April 2012, designed by India's Central Public Works Department, reportedly with a nod to Frank Gehry's Fish sculpture in Barcelona. It's one of the entries in Weird Buildings, a Hoxton Mini Press collection that also takes in a Lebanese house built as an Airbus A380 and a Washington State gas station built as a teapot.

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Talk about yourself like you're someone else. Researchers at Michigan State and the University of Michigan ran two brain-imaging experiments in which people reflected on distressing images and painful memories using either "I" or their own first name. Switching to the third person cut the brain's emotional reactivity marker within the first second of looking, and the scans showed it took no extra mental effort to pull off. Most emotion-regulation strategies cost you something. This one costs a pronoun. So next time the day comes apart, try asking why [your name] is upset rather than why you are.

Source: Moser et al., Scientific Reports (2017)

Pac-Man was originally called Puck Man, but the name was changed before the US release because one marker pen and the obvious swap were all it would take to ruin an arcade cabinet.

1675 – King Charles II and John Flamsteed lay the foundation stone of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.

1851 – Isaac Singer patents the sewing machine that carries his name.

1858 – Queen Victoria sends the first transatlantic telegraph message to President James Buchanan, who replies that it is a triumph more glorious than any won by a conqueror on a battlefield.

1929 – Babe Ruth becomes the first player in Major League history to hit 500 home runs, off Willis Hudlin at League Park in Cleveland, in a 6-5 Yankees loss.

2008 – Michael Phelps wins two golds in the space of an hour in Beijing, taking the 200m butterfly in 1:52.03 and anchoring the 4x200m freestyle relay in 6:58.56, both world records.

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

He Stopped the Wedding And Had a Question First!

Kristen and Dereck were middle school sweethearts who found their way back to each other two decades later, and by their June wedding her stepson Levi, 10, had been part of her life for four years. Partway through the ceremony, Levi walked up to the altar, because there was something he wanted to ask her before anything else happened.

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 😊