Cracked Archive - History
A Brief, Bizarre History of the Queen's Jubilees
Every time the anniversary of the Queen becoming the Queen hits a big round number, everyone in her realm stops to celebrate the truly undercelebrated woman.
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- By Amanda Mannen
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6 5 Disasters Deleted From Your History Books
Featuring a clown in a tub and bean gas explosions.
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- By Ryan Menezes
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- 15
Cracked's Big Questions: 6 Reasons Why The U.S. Doesn't Use The Metric System
5,280 feet to a mile is a terrible system, so why are we so attached to it?
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- By Dan Fritschie
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- 60
Meet 'Varney,' The Vampire Who Popped Up 50 Years Before 'Dracula'
One serialized novel changed everything and gave us the hip, hawt undead bloodsuckers we know and love today. That penny blood was Varney the Vampire (1845-1847), and without it the modern vampire would look a lot different.
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- By Jess Nevins
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12 Inventions That Were Accidentally Invented Twice
It took two people multiple centuries to come up with "the lightning rod." Congrats.
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- By Eli Yudin
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15 Sadistic Facts About the Marquis de Sade, the OG King of Smut
The censorship of his work raised important questions about freedom of speech, but he was absolutely not the kind of guy you wanted to hang out with.
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- By Amanda Mannen
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15 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About the Lizzie Borden Hatchet Murders
We all know that Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks -- but did she?
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- By Amanda Mannen
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Poppies and Politics: The History of Memorial Day
It wasn’t always barbecue and booze.
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- By Amanda Mannen
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5 Nutty Moments From The Lives (And Deaths) Of America's First Leaders
They died as they lived: weirdly.
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- By Ryan Menezes
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15 Weirdest Food Trends of the ‘80s
Over the course of this decade that was mostly fueled by cocaine and hairspray, food companies apparently figured that what we actually ate didn’t much matter.
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- By Amanda Mannen
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26 Food Products From The 80s (That Should Stay In The Past)
It's easy to forget that not everything from the past is worth remembering...
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- By Cracked Readers, Shea
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- 53
Reagan And Gorbachev Agreed To Team Up Against Aliens
See, this is why Reagan tried to build Star Wars.
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- By Ryan Menezes
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The Epic War For Sealand: The World's Realest Fake Country
What if you could find a loophole so good that it effectively lets you start your own country, free from the rule of law? Well, that’s happened exactly once in modern memory, and oh boy, did it get weird.
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- By Alex Hanton
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13 Eyebrow-Arching Numbers About Higher Education
Outstanding American student loan debt? $1.75 trillion. Canada's GDP? $1.643 trillion.
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- By Shea
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- 49
From Miners to Hipsters: A Complete History of Jeans
The story of jeans is really the story of America: the powerful stealing from the less fortunate.
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- By Amanda Mannen
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