Good News Still Exists: 7 Stories Guaranteed to Leave You Smiling

It's easy to find bad news, particularly during a pandemic. But put ventilator shortages and looming ecological collapse out of mind for a few minutes, with these stories of good news from around the world.

Dog Mother Expands Her Family

A corgi mom rescued from a puppy farm is not only raising her own puppies, but also a full litter of orphaned pit bull puppies.

The Dodo has the full story of Sara, a corgi taken in by No Dog Left Behind Minnesota, who is now nurturing four puppies discovered beneath an abandoned building. Their rescuers began with bottle-feeding, but the tiny puppies weren't responding well. The rescue's director gave Sara a shot. Ever since, Sara has been nursing and cleaning both litters of puppies, who are getting along like siblings.

"She has taken over all mom responsibilities," Stephanie Easley, a No Dog Left Behind Minnesota volunteer, told The Dodo. "The corgi puppies are even behaving more gentle to their orphaned sibling pups. They sleep together in one giant pile."

Apollo 13 Astronaut Still Celebrating Boom Day

Astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise are still alive to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission that endangered their lives (the third member of the mission, Jack Swigert, died in 1982). Haise will even celebrate a yearly holiday of his own invention: April 13's "Boom Day," commemorating the moment—50 years ago this year—when an oxygen tank explosion transformed a trip to the moon into a rescue mission.

The remarkable innovation mustered to bring the astronauts home has since become one of NASA's, and the United States', proudest moments.

"It was a great mission," Haise, now 86, told the AP, going on to say that Apollo 13 showed "what can be done if people use their minds and a little ingenuity."

The three astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean—home safe—on April 17, 1970.

Ebola Outbreak Over

The World Health Organization is expected to announce the end of the Ebola outbreak that has spread through the Democratic Republic of Congo since August 2018. The last patient undergoing treatment for the deadly disease has been released.

"It feels strange for this place to be so empty," Dr. Esther Sokolua Perso of Doctors Without Borders told Al Jazeera, speaking from outside the nearly deserted Ebola Treatment Center in the DRC city of Beni. "But it's an enormous relief."

Baths: For Your Health!

Tub bathing has been shown to lower rates of cardiovascular disease among adults between the ages of 45 and 59. Drawing from a massive, multi-decade study of 61,000 Japanese adults by the Japan Public Health Center, analysts published in the official journal of the British Cardiovascular Society, Heart, found an association between hot bath frequency and protection from death from cardiovascular disease.

According to the Good News Network, the study found a daily hot bath resulted in a 28 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a 26 percent lower risk of stroke.

More Quick Good News Bites:

People in the northern India state of Punjab can see the Himalayas from more than a hundred miles away, for the first time in decades.

Hong Kong's Global Brands Group will no longer source fur for the luxury brands it licenses—including Calvin Klein, Kenneth Cole, Juicy Couture and Sean John—joining Macy's, Bloomingdale's and other outlets pledging to discontinue fur items by the end of 2020.

This family in Wellington, England used colorful chalk to lighten up their street, creating a rainbow house.

For more good news, check out Newsweek's Heroes of the Pandemic.