In 637, a few years after the founder of Islam, Muhammad, died, one of his military commanders completed the Arab conquest of Jerusalem, prior to that a holy city for Jews and Christians. It was over 400 years before Christians were able to take it back.

There are only four seasons so one of them is going to win when it comes to drug use, and it's little surprise that season for teenagers is summer,when kids are not in school.

A recent analysis of survey results found that 34 percent of new LSD initiates first used the drug in the summer. In addition, 30 percent of marijuana, 30 percent of ecstasy (MDMA/Molly), and 28 percent of cocaine use was found to begin in summer months. Since summer is 25 percent of the seasons this is not really compelling insight, but if epidemiologists want to get National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) funding, they need to find things to hype up.

Claims about marijuana being medical have never been shown in clinical trials, they have instead been a joke among users, but it opened the doorway to recreational legalization. Yet the myth of benefit, or at least lack of harm, persist, and new survey results show more women are smoking it daily. Even pregnant ones. At least in California.

There is no substitute for medication; not food, not meditation, not music, not supplements, not anything, except in instances where the issue is not medical. And for some, anxiety is a non-specific symptom for a disease they don't have, it is just concern about an event, and in those instances something like music may work as well as medication, finds a study using music before an anesthesia procedure.

For nearly as long as man has traveled into space, it has been known that it brings a greater risk of fainting upon return; and the longer the time in a gravity-free environment like space, the greater the risk appeared.

Orthostatic hypotension is the technical term for a temporary drop in blood pressure when a person stands up after sitting or lying down because blood rushes to the feet, away from the brain. Dizziness or fainting due to changes in blood flow can occur after lengthy bed rest, among people with certain health disorders or, in the case of astronauts, being in a low-gravity environment.

Breast cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma get outsized funding compared to their mortality while pancreatic cancer, colon, liver, and others far deadlier get shorted, at least by government agencies. The private sector obviously wants to make products to save everyone, even if it's only 1,000 people a year.

Why? In the case of lung cancer, it may be because over half of lung cancers are caused by smoking and even more are statistically linked to smokers (second-hand smoke) but it still carries a stigma. Liver cancer may be associated with alcoholics. Both of those are lifestyle diseases and not genetic bad luck.