8.5 Things That Went Right in 2013

It was a year of cronuts and pretzel buns, green eggs and ham, of Syria and Mali and the East China Sea, of Edward Snowden and Pope Francis, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un. Jeff Bezos showed off a package-delivering drone. Twitter (TWTR) tweeted its own IPO announcement. Stocks went up, housing revived, unemployment fell, and banks got fined. American Airlines (AAL) and US Airways merged, and a solar-powered airplane hopscotched across the U.S. We canâ??t discern much of a pattern here. But in the spirit of the holidays, hereâ??s a look on the bright sideâ??a list of the things that went right in 2013, sometimes unexpectedly. It is short, admittedly, but sweet. May 2014 be better yet.