GoodNews

1,487 years ago today, the Hagia Sophia was completed. The Eastern Orthodox Church of Holy Wisdom is considered the greatest Byzantine building. It was converted to a mosque in 1453 by the Turks, in 1935 to a museum, and in 2020 to a mosque again. It is considered to have changed…

56 years ago today, the inaugural Dakar Rally Raid was staged, with the course stretching from Paris, France, to Dakar, Senegal. 182 vehicles took the start of the inaugural rally in Paris, with 74 surviving the 10,000-kilometer (6,200 mi) trip to Dakar while crossing terrains such as sand dunes, mud, camel…

Don Lambert worked at a small newspaper in Kansas nearly 50 years ago when an example of Christmas Eve kindness made its way onto the front page. He submitted the story to GNN in 2020, saying, “It has a message that is important to us every single day. Kindness is all…

From India comes the story of a tribal community who gained ownership of a lush bamboo forest and used it to brighten the futures of the otherwise poverty-stricken inhabitants. According to a monumental piece of legislation passed in 2006, any indigenous community can apply for ownership of federally-owned land on which…

Stories of personal triumphs don’t always start with success—they often start with setbacks and failure. For an obese New Yorker, it was being told in front of everyone that he was too big to get on a roller coaster. 39-year-old Brian Clegg says he has struggled with his weight his whole…