2016 has been pretty rough so far. Between mass shootings, oil spills, and way too many celebrity deaths, the first half of the year has been pretty bleak. In the wake of tragedy and civil unrest, a lot of good things have slipped under the radar this year. Here’s a list of fifteen good things that have happened so far in 2016.

A 14-year old boy turned down $30 million for his start-up company.

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  • Taylor Rosenthal, the 14-year old founder and CEO of RecMed, created a vending machine that distributes first aid kits. An undisclosed company offered Taylor a $30 million buyout for his company, but Taylor refused, saying that he "wanted to grow and develop the company from what it was." Taylor exhibited his start-up at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, becoming the youngest person to ever attend the event. Taylor later said that he hoped to sell his company for $50 million, saying that he would use the money to attend Notre Dame University to study business or medicine.
  • Death by heart disease has decreased by 70% in the United States.
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  • Studies show that since 1969, deaths related to heart disease have decreased from 520 deaths per 100,000 Americans to 169 deaths per 100,000 Americans. While the rate of decline has decelerated since 2011, heart disease mortality nearly lost its place as the leading cause of death in Americans to cancer.
• A group of friends formed a human chain to save a dog trapped in a reservoir.
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  • A dog trapped by rushing waters in a Kazakhstan reservoir was saved by a passing group. After one member waded into the water to retrieve the dog, the rest of the group linked arms so that they could scale the side of the reservoir and pull the dog to safety.
• Two brothers saw color for the first time thanks to specially-designed glasses.
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  • Jimmy and Jace Papenhausen, a pair of color-blind brothers, were able to see color for the first time thanks to EnChroma glasses. EnChroma became widely accepted in the eye care community in 2014 and uses technology that "alleviates red-green color blindness, enhancing colors without the compromise of color accuracy." Jimmy and Jace were brought to tears after seeing the world through a different lens.
• A Syrian refugee in Germany turned in $55,000 that he found in his apartment.
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  • A 25-year old refugee from Syria found 150,000 euros hidden in a donated wardrobe and, after confirming that the bills were real, called the refugee officials in Minden, Germany to turn in the lost money. The police praised the man for his honesty and are still looking for the rightful owner.
• Pope Francis spoke against society’s obsession with physical beauty while dedicating Mass to the disabled community.
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  • Pope Francis continues to progressively reform the Catholic Church by condemning the social obsession with having a "perfect" body, saying that it's wrong that "anything that is imperfect has to be hidden away, since it threatens the happiness and serenity of the privileged few and endangers the dominant model." The pope also spoke against the marginalization of the disabled community, bringing several disabled children with him on stage and speaking with disabled adults after Mass.
• A celebrity hairstylist has been giving haircuts to the homeless all around the world.
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  • On Sundays, Mark Bustos gives free haircuts to the homeless people of New York City. Bustos also hands out food, clothes, and toiletries, and his altruistic mission has taken him all across the United States as well as six different countries, including China, Costa Rica and Jamaica.
• Portugal ran its entire nation solely on renewable energy for four days straight.
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  • Using only solar, wind, and hydro generated electricity, Portugal managed to meet both the citizens' and industries' power demands for a consecutive 107 hours. Some believe that Portugal's energy policy might become one of the first European countries to achieve net-zero emissions.
• A retiree is launching a project to transport 80 endangered rhinos to an Australian reservation to save the animals from poaching.
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  • Ray Dearlove, a former sales executive, is attempting to protect an endangered rhino species from poachers by moving 80 of the creatures from South Africa to Australia. Other preservation acts like Rhinos without Borders have moved the creatures out of South Africa to other, relatively safer nations like Botswana, but Dearlove wants to put an entire ocean — not just a few miles — between the poachers and their quarry.
• An Orlando theater built angel wing props to shield a funeral from anti-gay protestors.
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  • Following the tragic shooting at Orlando's Pulse, one of the city's gay nightclubs, members of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church planned to protest the funerals for the victims. In response, a local theater constructed angel wings from fabric in order to block the protestors from the funeral attendees. The police eventually ushered the protestors away from the event to the cheers of the hundreds who had come to support the families.
• Three women prevented a possible rape in progress.
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  • Monica Kenyon, Marla Saltzer, and Sonia Ulrich witnessed man slip something from a black vial into his female companion's drink while attending happy hour at an upscale Santa Monica restaurant. The woman was in the bathroom at the time, and Ulrich went in after her to warn her about her male companion's actions. Saltzer told the server what the three women had witnessed, and the restaurant security was told to watch the couple for any further evidence. The Santa Monica police were notified, and the man was taken away without protest. Security camera footage and the drugged glass proved the man's attempt at drugging his female counterpart.
• An Afghan teacher has been delivering books via bicycle to villages that lack schools.
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  • Saber Hosseini uses his bicycle to transport hundreds of books every weekend to isolated villages that lack proper education facilities. He returns after a few weeks to deliver new books from his lending library of over 3500 items.
• A mayor in Ohio is giving up half of his annual salary to help get his city out of fiscal emergency.
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  • Faced with a financial crisis in his town, Ohio mayor Tom Scarnecchia will be giving up $34,000 a year to help reduce his city’s deficit. Scarnecchia is also encouraging other members of the city council to give up a part of their paycheck in order to help balance the city's budget.
• Harriet Tubman is replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
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  • The United States Treasury Department decided to remove Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill and replace him with famous abolitionist Harriet Tubman, making Tubman the first woman to be placed on United States currency. Other changes include adding women's suffrage figures like Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, and Susan B. Anthony to the back of the $10 bill and replacing the Lincoln Memorial with Martin Luther King Jr. on the back of the $5 bill. The changes will go into effect in 2020.
• 200 strangers attended the funeral of a homeless WWII veteran with no family.
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  • Maj. Jaspen Boothe sent out invitations through every veterans' group she could think of when she heard that WWII veteran Serina Vine would only have four attendants at her funeral. As a result, 200 members from various military factions came together to pay their respects. Vine, a WWII Navy veteran who served from 1944 to 1946, died at the age of 91. Vine was homeless in Washington, D.C. up until 1995, when she was taken to the Department of Veterans Affairs' Community Living Center.