Smile mileage?

Elle Gianelli is giving socks for Christmas: not to friends or family, but to people she has never met. Since she was 13, she has been sharing her love of bright socks with zanyAmusingly unconventional, eccentric. designs by sending them to old people across the US.

"Maybe they don't have family," she says, "or maybe they live super far away and they're only getting, like, a postcard." Four years on, she is posting to 92 care homes.

In a year full of grim headlines, stories like this offer real hope. Here are some others:

January: The US approves the first vaccine to protect bees against diseases.

February: The James Webb space telescope discovers six galaxies 100 times larger than expected.

March: Britain and the EUEuropean Union. An economic and political union of 27 countries. agree on the Windsor Framework as a solution to Brexit's biggest problem.

April: Brazil's president creates reserves covering 1.5 million acres to protect indigenous people.

May: WHOShort for the World Health Organisation. declares an end to Covid-19 as a global health emergency.

June: Four children who survived a plane crash are found safe after 40 days in the Colombian jungle.

July: Scientists at MassachusettsA state in the northeast USA. University discover a way of harnessing electricity from the atmosphere.

August: Simone Biles, who suffered a mental health crisis two years ago, wins a record eighth US gymnastics championship.

September: Van GoghA Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art.'s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen is recovered three years after being stolen from a Dutch museum.

October: WHO approves a vaccine for malaria that can be manufactured on a massive scale.

November: 41 Indian construction workers are successfully rescued after two weeks trapped in a collapsed tunnel.

Of these, it is probably the scientific and medical breakthroughs that will be considered most significant by future historians. And there are have been many of these.

The NHS approved the use of Olaparib, a drug that will improve some cancer sufferers' chances of survival by a third. Surgeons in the US performed the world's first transplant of an entire eyeball.

In Switzerland, a man who had been paralysed for 12 years was able to walk again with the aid of brain and spinal implants. Using AI, electrical signals in his brain are decoded to send messages to his muscles.

A team of scientists managed to bring a pair of minute roundworms back to life 46,000 years after they became frozen in the Siberian permafrostAny ground that remains completely frozen for at least two years. Permafrost covers large regions of the Earth. . Other scientists discovered that metals can fuse together again after cracking, showing that in future cars and structures could mend themselves.

But perhaps just as significant are the things like Elle Gianelli's sock project that cheer us in the here and now, and keep us going in the face of bad news. Some would say that King Charles's coronation fulfilled that role, providing a spectacle that brought British people together amid division.

Music and the other arts also provided a welcome boost - above all in the form of Taylor Swift. Her Speak Now album became her 12^th number one, a new record for a female artist.

Yes: There are people all over the world doing things that demonstrate humanity's fundamental goodness and amazing ingenuity. We should not be dismayed by the minority who behave stupidly and selfishly.

No: The headlines this year have been dominated by conflicts such as those in Ukraine and Gaza, and disasters brought about by climate change. There is no sign of those things getting better.

Or... The most significant developments of 2023 have been in AI, and there is no telling what the consequences might be. It could solve the world's problems or prove a disaster for humanity.