Cracked Archive - History

4 Ways US Highways Were Designed To Screw Over Black Americans
No, it's not a joke. Highways are racist, which is exactly what their designers wanted.
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- By Ryan Menezes
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69
The Great Emu War: Australia's Most Embarrassing Defeat
The time Australia faced a new, unforeseen enemy ... the dreaded emu.
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- By Ethan Tyrrell
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16
To Understand America's Future, We Need To Look Back At Watergate
Watergate taught us crimes don't really count, as long as they're committed against people you don't like.
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- By Mark Hill
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17
5 Big Inventions ... That Were Total Accidents
Our happy accidents don't change the world. These did.
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- By Mac Faber
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25
Robert Liston, The Surgeon Who Killed Three People in One Operation
Here’s a look at what can go wrong when your surgeon is essentially a human Slap Chop for humans.
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- By Mac Faber
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8
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4 Ways Marijuana Took The World By Storm
Cannabis may be humanity's oldest agricultural crop, but the getting high part of cannabis took a bit longer to figure out ...
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- By Philip Yiannopoulos
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16
The Bonkers Life And Death Of History's Dumbest Outlaw Cowboy
This is the story of Elmer McCurdy and the outlaw corpse that wouldn't die ...
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- By Mac Faber
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26
18 Medieval Myths You Believe Because Of Movies
Sometimes the images you see on movie screens don't match reality.
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- By Laura Caseley
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48
5 Surprisingly Dark Backstories To Everyday Things
Sometimes the origins of things are just a big ol' crap pile.
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- By Tom Koff
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33
5 Crazy Ways Cold Cases Were Solved
Every once in a while, reality does a sick kick-flip and gives us a crime story worthy of a cartoon.
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- By Amanda Mannen
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18
4 Bonkers Secret Military Operations (That Failed Horribly)
Propelling warfare into the future one bad sci-fi plot at a time.
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- By Cedric Voets
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24
6 Details About America's First, Only, And Greatest Emperor
Many have never even heard about the reign of the United States' first and only monarch ...
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- By Ethan Tyrrell
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22
7 Ways The Pinkertons Became Who They Are
Are the Pinkertons who 'Red Dead Redemption' makes them out to be?
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- By Justin McGown
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45
5 Tales Of The Most WTF Neighborhood In Japan
Three red-light districts were established around the country, with Yoshiwara -- located in Edo (old-timey Tokyo) -- being the absolutely wildest of them all …
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- By Cezary Jan Strusiewicz
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12
'The Public Universal Friend,' Or The 1776 US History Story You Never Learned In School
A lot of things happened in 1776, including the origin story of the America's (probably) first nonbinary doomsday prophet.
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- By Ryan Menezes
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16