What human being alive could not feel an enormous surge of humanity and gratitude when miner Florencio Avalaos was brought to the surface from 2,400 feet below the surface in Chile?

The hug with his wife and child was the greatest news moment of the year perhaps the decade

There are indeed times when we are the world, all of us, not countries or continents, but human beings alone on a planet.

Looking on the face of the young son of Florencio Avalos as he awaited his father's rescue you could not but be touched to the the core of your soul as to the depth of the extraordinary emotion of the families

The cries were 'Chile, Chile' but hey just as well may have been for all of humanity.

With such a dearth of good news in this world of ours, it was magnificent to see man overcome an incredible challenge such as rescuing miners thousands of feet in the ground.

We can only imagine what it was like to spend 69 days under the earth that kept them prisoner

For seventeen of those days they were cut off from the world, alone and completely at the mercy of the operation to rescue them.

After seventeen days almost everyone except the families themselves believed that they were dead in the mine collapse.

Yet somehow they survived and when the drill came back to the surface with a note attached from the miners that read "33 of us all alive" the whole world rejoiced in the sheer incredulity of it all.

The operation to rescue them was global with Americans providing much of the expertise that led to the time needed to rescue them being cut in half.

But in the end it was all mankind that could rejoice.

A rare moment when we were all the world.