Never listen to anyone who says good news doesn't sell papers. The extraordinary rescue of 33 miners from the San Jose mine in Chile raised the spirits of billions of people across the globe. It has made us all huge admirers of Chile, its miners and everyone who made this improbable miracle possible.

The plight of those 33 men represented our worst nightmare: being buried alive with little hope of survival. Yet every single man emerged safely after 69 days, thanks to Chile's extraordinary efforts, supported by international agencies such as NASA.

Mining is a brutal occupation. My native Wales has endured countless pitside vigils after underground explosions and landslides. Almost a century ago, the village of Senghenydd near Caerphilly witnessed Britain's worst ever colliery disaster, when 439 miners died after an explosion ripped through the underground workings. The colliery company had ignored safety regulations, which might have saved at least 100 of the victims – yet were fined just £24.

Wales mourned countless further lost lives in the years after Senghenydd in 1913. As recently as 1965 31 miners died at Cambrian Colliery in the Rhondda. And the following year saw the appalling tragedy of Aberfan, when a generation of children at the village's school died along with 28 adults when the building was engulfed by a colliery waste tip. (See my blogpost on Aberfan, and a further post about how warnings were ignored.)

What a contrast with this week's joyous news from Chile, when all the tears were happy ones.