Area Ronald McDonald Houses to benfit from McDonald's Shamrock Shakes
Locally, the Ronald McDonald House of the Four States will also benefit from those who indulge in Shamrock Shakes.
The Ronald McDonald House of the Four States is a 'home away from home' for the families of seriously ill children and ill expectant mothers being treated at Freeman Health System and Mercy Hospital Joplin. It is located at 3402 South Jackson in Joplin.
The goal is to raise $5 million nationally, which could provide 50,000 overnight stays for families staying at Ronald McDonald Houses.
The Ronald McDonald House of the Four States opened on July 27, 1998, and has served hundreds of families in the Four States area. A common misconception is that a Ronald McDonald House is owned or in some way funded by the McDonald Corporation. Each Ronald McDonald House is locally owned and operated.
This Shamrock Season honors the fundraiser that helped open the first Ronald McDonald House over 50 years ago.
'We love knowing that local proceeds from our delicious, minty treat will help to support local Ronald McDonald Houses in keeping families together,' says Alex Maffei, second-generation McDonald's franchisee. 'A core value for us at McDonald's is Family. Together, with our crew, customers, and iconic McDonaldland character, Uncle O'Grimacey, we're all helping Ronald McDonald Houses make families feel at home, even when they can't be.'
Ronald McDonald House of the Four States is part of the only worldwide service of its kind. The first Ronald McDonald House opened in Philadelphia in 1974. Fred and Fran Hill's daughter Kim was undergoing treatment for leukemia. During Kim's three years of treatment, the Hills grew tired of sleeping in the hospital waiting room and eating meals out of vending machines. Fred, a player for the Philadelphia Eagles at the time, rallied the support of his teammates and General Manager Jim Murray; Dr. Audrey Evans from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; and local McDonald's franchisees to create Ronald McDonald House. More than 50 years later, there are more than 377 Ronald McDonald Houses in 45 countries and regions, and McDonald's franchisees and its customers have donated over $1 billion to Ronald McDonald Houses.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO STAY THERE?
Families are asked to contribute $10 per night. If that is not possible, their stay is sponsored.
.
This 24-hour, 365-day-a-year program is operated by one full-time program manager, one part-time program coordinator, and 136 active adult and teen volunteers, as well as 16 junior volunteers and 16 special project volunteers.
The House Manager oversees the day-to-day operation.
Volunteers help with all aspects of the House, including housekeeping, providing support and services to families, performing night manager duties, preparing meals, and fundraising.
All monies needed to operate the program are derived through individual and/or corporate donations. Ronald McDonald House is a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization established as a 501c3. Donations are tax-deductible.
Monthly operating costs average $26,900 per month.
Click here for other ways to donate or get involved.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Newsweek
19 hours ago
- Newsweek
How Digital Screens Harm Your Eyes—and Simple Ways to Protect Them
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Fram explained that tear film—the thin fluid that covers the surface of your eye—is the first thing that light rays hit. So, the lubrication provided by the tear film is essential to your vision. However, if someone stares at a screen too long and isn't regularly blinking, their eyes are not stimulating the system that makes tears. Dr. Timothy P. Page, the nation's fifth-ranked cataract surgeon, told Newsweek it's the same outcome that would stem from "staring at a brick wall all day long." "If you're not blinking and staring at fine detail or anything up close, that interferes with the blink reflex," Page said. "We definitely see more complaints related to computer use, but it's not that the computer is actually doing anything bad to the eye, it's just that staring at something up close for so long, for so many hours a day, causes eye strain and dry eye." 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Buzz Feed
2 days ago
- Buzz Feed
102 Weird Facts That Are Wild, Random, And Fun
I don't know about anyone else, but I love learning interesting, bizarre, and straight-up weird facts about anything and everything. (In fact, it's quite a conversation starter.) That said, here are some wacky, intriguing, strange, and somewhat funny facts that sound somewhat fake but are entirely true: Germany has more castles than there are McDonald's in the United States. Yep, you heard that right. Germany is estimated to have 25,000 castles, and there are around 13,000 McDonald's locations in America. In Washington state, there's a real-life law stating it's illegal to kill Bigfoot and other sasquatch-like creatures. And you know what? Good for them. Dogs are one of the three deadliest animals in the UK. The other two are bees and cows. Sloths are slow in everything they do — including digestion. Because they digest foods so slowly, they basically have to breathe out their farts because they can't *actually* fart. If a bunch of gas builds up in a sloth's intestines, it could get sick and potentially even burst. Rather than farting, the gases are reabsorbed into the bloodstream and are then respired out of the about morning breath. There are caves in Missouri that store 1.4 billion pounds of government-owned cheese. Located deep in the Ozark Mountains in limestone-converted mines, the caves are kept at a perfect 36°F. As someone who's lactose intolerant, my stomach is in knots just thinking about it. This one actually made me do a double-take: Cornflakes were invented to suppress sexual impulses and desires. John Harvey Kellogg invented cornflakes in 1894, but it was later used as part of an extreme diet promoted by his church to basically suppress horniness. Kellog thought sex and masturbation were abnormal and unhealthy, so he believed cornflakes — and their lack of flavor — would help fight off any desire. Cockroach dust plays a part in why so many inner-city children have asthma. 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Male giraffes will taste a female giraffe's urine to see if she is ready to mate. Even in the animal kingdom, men cannot mind their business. On average, lightning strikes Earth 100 times per second. It saddens me to report that Winnie the Pooh was banned from a Polish playground because the honey-obsessed bear doesn't wear pants. As if it's his fault! Attempting to get kids to eat more vegetables, McDonald's engineer bubblegum-flavored broccoli. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't a hit. Blue whales are the baddies of the ocean (sorry, orcas), and if I were a sea creature, I would never, ever tussle with one, especially considering a blue whale's tongue alone can weigh more than an elephant. Due to their genes, redheads may need about 20% more anesthesia than non-redheads. I literally never thought about Barbie being called anything other than Barbie, but her full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts. There are more possible chess game variations than atoms in the universe. 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The short-horned lizard squirts blood out of its eyes — at a distance of up to three feet — to confuse predators. However, the blood contains a chemical that makes dogs, wolves, and coyotes noxious. Love that. A rainbow on Venus is called a "glory." Frogs use their eyes to help them swallow their meals. When a frog swallows food, its eyes pull down to the roof of their mouth to help push the food down its throat. Human brains are constantly eating themselves. To "cleanse" the system, cells will smother and consume smaller cells or molecules in a process called phagocytosis. The fear of long words is called hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. After seeing that, I'm scared, too. Ants don't have lungs. Instead, they breathe through tiny holes on the sides of their bodies called spiracles. When lightning strikes, the air it passes through can reach up to 50,000°F — five times hotter than the sun's surface. Due to thermal expansion, the Eiffel Tower can "grow" up to six inches in the summer. Tigers don't just have striped fur but skin, too! If you were to shave a tiger, you'd find identical striped markings as if they were tattoos. If you go to the sky deck of the Willis Tower in Chicago on a clear day, you can see four other US states: Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin. A blue whale's heartbeat can be heard from two miles away. Sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins. Dolphins must come to the surface almost every 10 minutes, but sloths can hold their breath for 20 minutes or more by slowing down their heart rates. Before toiler paper, corn cobs were used as a method of wiping. This one might unsettle you, but snails have teeth. Snails can have up to 1,000 to 12,000 teeth. I don't know what they need those for, but good for them! I hope they have snail dentists, then. While she was a teenager during World War II, Queen Elizabeth II became a junior officer in the Auxiliary Territorial Service and became a trained mechanic. The real name of a hashtag is actually octothorpe. Due to the anatomy of their neck muscles and spine, pigs cannot look up to the sky. Imagine being a pig and never knowing that there is a whole world above you. BRB, gonna cry for a sec. For most people, it's impossible to lick their elbows. (Go ahead, try it.) A French general gave John Quincy Adams an alligator as a gift. The gator was kept in one of the White House's bathtubs. Ostriches have bigger eyes than they do brains. In fact, among all land animals, ostriches have the biggest eyes. A dentist invented the electric chair as a method for execution. Simply put, I'm glad I wasn't his patient. Like fingerprints, human tongues also have unique tongueprints. If you've ever wondered what to call that blob of toothpaste you squeeze onto your toothbrush, it's called a nurdle. Animals process time differently depending on their size. Research suggests that smaller animals like mice and lizards process time faster than larger animals like elephants and giraffes. This is also true about animals that fly and marine predators. Due to fast-paced lifestyles, these animals have visual systems that take in changes at higher and faster rates. Competitive art was considered a sport for the first four decades of the modern Olympics. Artists could earn medals for painting, architecture, sculpting, and music. America would win in the music category every time so long as Beyoncé is willing to compete. From 1924–1954, stop signs used to be yellow. At the time, red dyes faded after a while, so the American Association of State Highway Officials went with yellow dye, which didn't fade. It wasn't until the 1950s that sign makers began using fade-resistant enamel. If you thought Abraham Lincoln wasn't fascinating enough, the dude is honored in the Wrestling Hall of Fame. He often competed in wrestling matches when he was younger and rarely lost. In 1992, the National Wrestling Hall of Fame formally inducted the former president as an "Outstanding American." There's even a mural of Lincoln inside the Hall of Fame museum in Stillwater, Oklahoma. If you've ever used a reindeer and a caribou in the same sentence, thinking you were referencing different animals (I'm definitely guilty), I'm sorry to announce that they're the same species. Among the world's five ocean basins, the Atlantic Ocean takes the cake as the saltiest. The inside of a Kit Kat is made up of a small amount of other Kit Kats, usually ones that cannot be sold. Unfortunately, George Washington died not knowing dinosaurs existed. The first and former president died in 1799, while the first official description of dinosaurs happened in 1842. Sad. Humans don't always see their noses because our brains filter out "useless" things to better grasp our surroundings. A polar bear's fur isn't actually white; it's translucent. It only appears white because it reflects visible light. It's certainly possible to use sign language with an accent. Australia is wider than the moon. The moon's diameter is around 2,112 miles, while Australia's is 2,485 miles. The fastest-moving muscle in the human body is the eyes. It's called the orbicularis oculi, and we have one in each eye. The Olympic rings were first produced in 1913, and they were designed to include all participating nations. The rings' colors, along with the white background, reflect the colors found on all of the countries' flags. How wholesome! There was once a French king who believed he was made of glass. King Charles IV had a psychiatric disorder called "Glass Delusion" and thought that he would shatter if anyone touched him. Beer was banned in Iceland until 1989. Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Steet was originally orange instead of green. In the show's first season, Oscar was orange partly due to some limitations of colorized TV at the time. It wasn't until season 2 that he turned green. If you ever wondered where the term "honeymoon" came from, it originated in the Middle Ages. When there was a newly married couple, they'd be supplied enough honey wine to last the first month of their marriage. Due to increased blood flow to the fingertips, human fingernails grow faster during summertime. Illinois is known as the pumpkin capital of the United States. A housefly's feet are 10 million times more sensitive than a human tongue. California experiences over 100,000 earthquakes a year. Thankfully, though, many of them are minor or are barely felt at all! Every year, Norway gifts London a huge Christmas tree, which is then decorated and displayed in Trafalgar Square. The tree serves as a thank-you gift for all the help the UK gave Norway during WWII. Owls sometimes swallow their food whole. The average Swiss person consumes about 48 pounds of cheese per year. Lastly: Walt Disney made it a rule for Disneyland not to sell chewing gum to keep the park clean. Wow, my brain is sweating from absorbing all that info. Instead of sending a "good morning" text, I'm just going to send one of these facts every day without any context. Do you know any interesting and fascinating facts? Let me know in the comments!
Buzz Feed
09-08-2025
- Buzz Feed
Kim Kardashian Stem Cell Treatment Post Draws Ire
Kim Kardashian is under fire after promoting an expensive stem cell treatment. In an Aug. 8 Instagram post, Kim talked about traveling to Mexico to receive stem cell therapy to treat "debilitating pain" caused by a shoulder injury from lifting weights two years ago. According to her, she'd "tried everything to find relief" before visiting Dr. Adeel Khan at Eterna Health and achieving "immediate" results. Kim said, "I regained full range of motion, and my shoulder has felt completely normal ever since." The positive experience led her to return to Dr. Khan "to address chronic back pain that I have been suffering with for years." Kim shared, "The Muse stem cell treatment was a game-changer once again. I experienced relief right away, and the unbearable pain is finally gone." She highly recommended the treatment for anyone struggling with back pain, writing, "It's transformed my life when I thought my body was breaking down." Except, for many people, stem cell treatment is wildly unaffordable. According to Global Stem Cell Therapy, costs in Mexico can be anywhere between $4,000 and $15,000. On top of that, many stem cell treatments are not FDA-approved, including those for shoulder and back pain. That said, many people weren't feeling Kim's post. This person straight-up told her, "Kimmy we're poor." Another commented, "Kim, there's people that are dying." Others wished they had that luxury... ...And accepted they'll have to live with their pain forever because they aren't rich. Another person sarcastically said, "Sounds super affordable." As others pointed out how wildly out-of-touch Kim's post was in the current economy. You can see more comments below, and then let me know what you think in the comments.
