If 2016 was the sick joke that wasn’t even remotely funny, 2017 has been a very weird follow up.
Stories of crime, terrorism and Donald Trump’s bizarre Diet Coke habit have punctuated our day-to-day lives, and it can begin to feel like we are in the midst of the goddamn Apocalypse.
So – to offer some perspective – here are 17 incredible things that happened this year, that have made the world an infinitely better place.
- The snow leopard and New Zealand’s iconic kiwi bird have been taken off the endangered animals list.
- Scientists have found a way to successfully rebreed sections of Australia’s deteriorating Great Barrier Reef.
- Women in Saudi Arabia are now allowed to drive.
- For 11 entire minutes in November, Trump’s Twitter account did not exist thanks to a Twitter employee.
- A spray gun was invented by scientists which treats burn victims by shooting stem cells, and regrowing skin without any scarring.
- Same-sex marriage was finally legalised in Australia.
- The Zika virus epidemic ended.
- Connie and Samuel Johnson’s foundation, Love Your Sister, raised more than $4 million for cancer research, with Samuel vowing not to stop until they reach $10 million.
- Amazon is in the process of building new headquarters, and once it is finished it will house 200 homeless people.
- The World Health Organisation has reported that HIV/AIDS is no longer the leading cause of death in Africa.
- Crime in the United States has actually decreased by 2.7 per cent this year.
- In France, the breeding of captive dolphins was banned.
- This has been the “greenest year ever” in the United Kingdom for electricity production.
- In March, Zimbabwe put a ban on the beating of children.
- Enormous breakthroughs have been made in the treatment of diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism and leukaemia.
- Over the next six years, conservationists have pledged to plant 73 million trees in the Amazon rainforest.
- Since 2000, child labour rates around the world have dropped no less than 50 per cent.
Although often it doesn’t look like it, there is – it turns out – a damn lot of good in the world.
LISTEN: It was the year of marriage equality.
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Women in Saudi Arabia will not be able to drive until next June. Apparently it will take them 9 months to work out how to issue them licences.