After a year with numerous high-profile celebrity deaths, many people have declared 2016 to be “the worst.” But was it really? Here are nine times this year when ordinary people proved they could do extraordinary things and make the world just a little bit better.
1. This Iowa boss decided to reward 800 company employees by taking them on a holiday cruise to Mexico.
2. Two off-duty firefighters at a New England Patriots game saved a fan who suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed nearby.
3. An infant diagnosed with biliary atresia, a rare disorder that causes scarring of the liver and blocks the bile ducts, was matched with a liver transplant in just 40 minutes.
4. Less than six months after a mother was charged with killing a child's four siblings, a Memphis man decided to give the child who survived a special Christmas.
5. A woman who survived childhood cancer three times became a registered nurse at the same hospital where she underwent treatment.
6. Two police officers saved a choking woman after other people walked passed her in a parking lot.
7. A New York man took his mother on 20 adventures to honor the 20 years she spent acting as a caregiver for her late husband.
8. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder gave a single mother $10,000 after her plea for help on Craigslist.
9. A 34-year-old man says he was “stunned” after a circuit judge suspended 30 years of his 50-year prison sentence and freed him immediately.
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