It’s tough scouring the news all day, because most of the stuff out there is pretty darn awful.

Dirty politics and tragedy and Syria and natural disasters and Trump – the list goes on, so how about a few stories that are sure to put a smile on your dial?

We’ll give it a shot.

First up there’s 17-year-old Mike Shelly, from Philadelphia, a fan who nailed a half-court shot during a basketball match between the Philadelphia Sixers and the Golden State Warriors.

Here’s the shot:

Cool, but these things happen all the time. Correct, but read a little about Mike’s backstory and what lies ahead and you might change your tune.

That story is HERE.

Next up is a real beaut, and if you don’t get a little teary-eyed then you’re dead inside.

A brief excerpt from NPR:

After his wife died, Dan Peterson didn’t know what to do with himself. He spent a lot of time in his garden remembering his wife’s favorite flower, white roses.

“I’ve never been able to get a white rose to grow — all mine are red,” Peterson says.

Before she died, Dan and his wife would do everything together. Now, the world just felt darker.

“I’m sitting here starring out the back window of my house, just waiting it out to see how long I was going to live,” he says.

One day on a dreaded grocery run, Dan felt particularly depressed.

And then Dan met this little gem, four-year-old Norah Wood:

Ready the tissues and read that story HERE.

You’ll need to clear a little time to enjoy the story of this old bloke below, but Dharampal Singh is worth it.

This from Vimeo:

This is the story of Dharampal Singh who, according to himself and four hastily arranged forms of ID, is 119 years old. While living that long would be a feat unto itself, it’s all the running that got our attention.

Mr. Dharam Singh likes to run.

A lot…

We traveled [sic] to magical (and crowded) India in the spring to figure out the ancient secrets of Dharam’s longevity and watch him run in the Hindustan Marathon, which, if his age is accurate, would make him the oldest runner of any kind of sanctioned running event by at least two decades.

Cue the Forrest Gump voice – I just felt like running.

You know what happens in Canada when a flight gets delayed? They party.

Via CBC, here’s how a delay at Pearson International Airport led to a little bit of a boogie.

Read that HERE.

We can’t do a good news post without something about animals, ya know.

Let’s check in with Safari West owner Peter Lang, and how he managed to save his preserve’s animals from those recent California fires.

PD with the deets:

…his epic tale — the story of a man who saved a thousand animals from relentless flames with nothing more than a winding chain of garden hoses — has become almost biblical.

The first night fires screamed down the hill from Calistoga to Santa Rosa, Lang woke up to “a wall of flames.” As everyone else fled — including his wife, Nancy, his employees and guests — the 76-year-old Lang stayed behind to save his endangered giraffes, zebras, cheetahs, and countless other exotic animals that roam the 400-acre wildlife preserve.

You can read that story HERE.

Happy Thursday – we are almost there.

[sources:npr&vimeo&cbc&pd]