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Tuesday, Nov 10 · Five good things · Three minutes
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KINDNESS • Sunny Skyz
Two fishermen spotted him after nine hours treading waterNine hours in the Pacific. Then a fishing boat turned back.
A 37-year-old pianist survived roughly nine hours treading water in the Pacific after going overboard from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, then was pulled aboard a fishing boat nearly 20 miles off the California coast on Friday. Sean Norton and Grant Garrett were heading back to Newport Beach after a morning trip when their captain spotted something in the water. The man is believed to have fallen from the 14-deck Ovation of the Seas around 2:30 a.m., as the ship traveled from Long Beach to Ensenada, Mexico. "Grant and I each got an arm and lifted him up, and he was in total shock," Norton said. The man recovered enough to explain that he played piano aboard the ship. Then he said the rest. "The only thing he said to me was, 'Thank you. I thought I was gonna die,'" Norton recalled. The Coast Guard later confirmed he was expected to survive. The water was 76 degrees, warmer than usual. Norton figures that is the only reason it worked. Read the full story → | |||
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MEDICINE • Good News Network
A 15-year-old built an app helping families understand autistic kidsThe app gave one confident answer. He realized that was the problem.
Shashank Madala was 15, with a single computer science class behind him, when he built Kora, a free app that helps parents read the emotional cues of autistic children. It now has more than 700 users across 12 countries, reaching families through autism therapy centers. The New Jersey high schooler started after watching relatives crowd around his younger autistic cousin at family gatherings, guessing out loud whether he was hungry or whether the room was too loud. They were often wrong. Over time, the boy stopped trying to tell them. A caregiver points a phone camera at the child, and Kora offers several possible readings, with bars for happy, sad, angry and afraid, plus suggestions for how to respond. Early versions gave one confident answer, which Madala realized repeated his family's mistake, so he rebuilt it to slow adults down and flag when it is unsure. In December 2025, Kora won first place in the Congressional App Challenge for New Jersey's 10th District, out of some 4,600 participants.
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KINDNESS • Good News Network
She passed his skeletons daily to radiation. He cheered her last one.The mailbox was full of hate. Then one letter stopped him.
Bill Pyle spent years getting hate mail for the skeletons in his Oxford, Ohio front yard. The accusations ran to devil worship and promises of hell. The skeletons, meanwhile, were raising the flag at Iwo Jima and giving a dog a bone, with a bony beekeeper standing nearby. Then a handwritten letter arrived that he said stopped him dead in his tracks. It came from Tammy Wyche, who drove past his house daily on her way to radiation treatment. "A highlight of my journey has been checking to see who else has joined the bone family & what they are up to," she wrote, noting that September 11th would be her final session. "Tears came to my eyes," Pyle told CBS News. On the morning of her last treatment, Wyche looked right and found a whole skeleton crew holding signs, cheering her on. For every person with a bone to pick, Pyle now hears from 30 more, some as far as Australia. Read the full story → | |||
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KINDNESS • GreaterGood
A senior dog lost everything. Now he rides shotgun.He lost his owner in a day. Then he found a job.
Ollie, a senior dog in Oklahoma, lost his owner and his home in the same day. Neighbors took turns caring for him until the Horse and Hound Rescue Foundation, a 50-acre ranch that rehabilitates Off-Track Thoroughbreds and shelters dozens of older and special-needs dogs, took him in for good. He settled fast. Ollie rides shotgun on errands around town and lobbies hard for drive-thru pup cups. He has also appointed himself the barn's official mouser, patrolling the feed room and keeping watch over the aisles. Nobody asked him to. He takes the job very seriously anyway. Senior dogs wait roughly four times longer than puppies in shelters, many arriving after an owner dies, through no fault of their own. Donations keep the bowls on the ranch full of soft food that lets the gray-muzzled residents stay active. "Ollie and all of his furry friends send a huge tail-wagging thank you for keeping their bowls full," his caregivers wrote. Read the full story → | |||
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NATURE • Upworthy
A seized smuggling ship is now a thriving ocean reefToo rusted to sell. Too costly to scrap. Now full of fish.
A smuggling ship that Irish customs officers seized in 2014, loaded with 32 million illegal cigarettes, has become a working reef off the west coast of Ireland. The 197-foot MV Shingle sat tied up in Dublin Port for roughly nine years, too rusted and asbestos-ridden to sell and too costly to scrap. It ran up the equivalent of about $2.24 million in fees while lawyers sorted out its fate. In 2024, the vessel was donated to a local program, Killala Bay Ships 2 Reef, which sank it 2.5 miles offshore. Marine life moved in almost immediately. Underwater footage shows the hull covered in barnacles, sponges and fish, and Ireland's Revenue Commissioners reported the wreck was fit to support a new ecosystem. "It's quite impressive to be honest," marine ecologist Jose Maria Farinas-Franco told RTE News. A ship built to carry contraband is now, by every measure the divers can find, a reef. Read the full story → | |||
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