The world’s largest database of good news and social change milestones from throughout human history
We are building the world’s largest database of social change milestones, from the first fire to today’s good news. Change is not only possible, it has happened consistently throughout human history. Filter by era, country, topic, actor, source, and more.
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change milestones archived
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- Tomorrow (2025 C.E. - ???)
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- Post-modernity (1945 - 2016 C.E.)
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Era
- Tomorrow (2025 C.E. - ???)
- Today (2017 C.E. - 2024 C.E.)
- Post-modernity (1945 - 2016 C.E.)
- Modernity (1500 - 1945 C.E.)
- Post-classical (500 - 1500 C.E.)
- Civilization (3000 B.C.E. - 500 C.E.)
- Agriculture (10000 - 3000 B.C.E.)
- Prehistory (250000 - 10000 B.C.E.)
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2020 C.E. November 10
City of Austin votes to spend $7 billion to revolutionize transportation
Austin’s new transit plan will build a new rail system with 31 stations, four rapid bus routes, new on-demand shuttles to take people to transit stations, and new park-and-ride stations. The city will also reserve $300 million to ensure that residents aren’t displaced from their homes as a result of gentrification.
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2020 C.E. November 10
Nebraska voters say ‘no more’ to 404% interest rates on payday loans
A 400% interest rate on small-dollar loans is the average across the States. Now that 83% of Nebraska’s voters have approved Initiative 428, that won’t be the case in this Midwestern state: Payday lending interest rates will soon be capped at 36%.
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2020 C.E. November 9
Childhood Hepatitis B cases drop 80% worldwide in last three decades
Due to a highly effective global vaccine program, the proportion of children under five who are chronically infected with Hepatitis B has plummeted significantly—to just under 1%. This is down from around 5% in the pre-vaccine era (the period between the 1980s and the early 2000s), according to new estimates from the World Health Organization.
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2020 C.E. November 9
‘Watershed’ coronavirus vaccine looks to be 90% effective in phase 3 trial of 43,500 people
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set a minimum effectiveness bar for COVID-19 vaccines at 50% for drugs seeking approval. This is the first COVID-19 candidate vaccine to produce data exceeding that mark.
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2020 C.E. November 9
School enrollment for girls around the world has risen from 73% to 89% since 1995
A new report from UNESCO shows great progress globally in girls’ education since 1995's Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a landmark commitment by 189 countries to advance the rights of girls and women.
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2020 C.E. November 7
Joe Biden wins election for President of the United States
Kamala Harris will become the first woman and first person of color to serve as Vice President.
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2020 C.E. November 6
Sunderland’s riverfront to house U.K.’s first carbon-neutral community
Designed to “reinvent the heart of Sunderland,” the masterplan design will include 1,000 new energy-efficient homes in four mixed-use residential neighborhoods for a population of 2,500.
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2020 C.E. November 6
Prop 17 restores voting rights for 50,000 paroled citizens in California
50,000 more Californians were welcomed back into the democratic process this election as the state celebrates the passing of Prop 17. The proposition, which passed with support from 59 percent of voters, will allow paroled citizens convicted of felonies to vote.
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2020 C.E. November 6
Florida votes to increase outdated minimum wage to $15
Voters in Florida tossed their outdated $8.56 per hour minimum wage in this election as the state became the eighth in the country to adopt a $15 minimum wage. Like many other states, Florida will introduce the raise slowly, upping it to $10 next year and raising it by $1 each year until it reaches $15 in 2026.
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2020 C.E. November 5
New AI from MIT can detect COVID-19 by listening to coughs
After the team from MIT trained its model on tens of thousands of cough and dialog samples, the technology recognized 98.5 percent of coughs from people with confirmed COVID-19 cases. It identified 100 percent of people who were ostensibly asymptomatic, too.
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2020 C.E. December 16
World’s 3rd-largest grocery chain eliminates 20 million single-use plastic wrappings
The U.K.'s Tesco has switched to recycled cardboard for packaging of holiday lights, crackers, pudding, cards, and more.
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2020 C.E. December 15
Canadian government commits over $3 billion for nature-based climate solutions
The government has proposed providing up to $3.16 billion to partner with provinces, territories, NGOs, Indigenous communities, and more to plant two billion trees.
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2020 C.E. December 15
E.U. leaders agree to cut emissions by 55% of 1990 levels by 2030
The deal was reached after the EU agreed on a $2.2 trillion budget Thursday evening that includes funds for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
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2020 C.E. December 15
The U.S. Supreme Court has fully restored DACA protections
DACA protects people who immigrated to the US with their guardians as children, shielding them from deportation, regardless of citizenship status.
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2020 C.E. December 14
Efforts to rewild London’s rivers are yielding results, finds report
Sightings of kingfishers in the capital have increased by 450 per cent since 2000, thanks to significant river restoration projects.
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2020 C.E. December 14
Algorithm helps find world’s poorest people to send them cash directly
GiveDirectly and UC Berkeley designed an algorithm that uses AI to identify the poorest individuals in the poorest areas in order to provide them with cash relief.
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2020 C.E. December 14
Global carbon emissions fall by record 7% in 2020
Carbon dioxide emissions in 2020 fell by 7%, the biggest drop ever, the Global Carbon Project said in its annual assessment.
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2020 C.E. December 11
New York state divests from fossil fuels in historic move
The massive pension fund’s financial portfolio is worth $226 billion. The new plan is to sell off the riskiest gas and oil stocks and be completely divested from fossil fuels by 2025.
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2020 C.E. December 11
Electronic waste on the decline in the United States
A new study led by a researcher at the Yale School of the Environment has found that the total mass of electronic waste generated by Americans has been declining since 2015.
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2020 C.E. December 11
Ocean Cleanup launches plan to clean up plastic in the world’s most polluted rivers
The company is now preparing to scale up production of the Interceptor as it tries to reach its stated goal of cleaning up the world’s 1000 most polluting rivers.