Cracked Archive - History

The 6 Coolest Things Said by Soldiers Before Killing People
War is hell. (Or a hell of a lot of fun, depending on who you ask.)
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- By Jacopo della Quercia
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1055
The 5 Most Adorable Stories in the History of War
There are two places you'll never expect to find stories of cuteness: the toilet and warfront. But, well, here we are.
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- By Dustin Koski, R. Jason Benson, Adam Koski
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661
13 Old War Photographs You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped
Maybe some of the ways we picture WWII looking -- all razor-jawed men charging through the mud in black and white -- isn't entirely accurate. Because we know for a fact that at least some of the soldiers were carrying floppy dong-shaped rifles into battle.
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- By Eric Yosomono
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1522
5 Nazi Plans That Prove They Were Dumber Than You Think
Other websites like to tiptoe around the issue, but we've never hesitated to come out and just say it: The Nazis were bad. We're also going out on a limb with this once: They were stupid.
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- By Jacopo della Quercia
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1527
6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America
It turns out our teachers, Hollywood and whoever we got our Thanksgiving mythology from (Big Turkey?) all made America's origin story far more boring than it actually was for some very disturbing reasons.
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- By Jack O'Brien, Elford Alley
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4084
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5 Ridiculous Origins of Famous Urban Legends
We don't expect our craziest urban legends to exist for good reasons, but we do at least expect their origins to be mysterious. If you can just point to the guy who made up the crazy story in the first place, what are we doing here?
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- By Pauli Poisuo, M. Asher Cantrell
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1576
6 Tiny Mistakes That Almost Ended the World
For those of us who grew up in the '80s and '90s, it's difficult to fully understand just how close to annihilation we actually came in the 20th century.
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- By Chris J.
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965
5 Baffling Discoveries That Prove History Books Are Wrong
A generation of students found out the hard way that archaeology isn't anywhere near as much fun as Indiana Jones made it look. Still, experts in the field do have their exciting, and even shocking, days at the office.
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- By Evan V. Symon
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2068
The 7 Greatest Pieces of Trash Talk in the History of War
In situations where every day literally could be your last, sometimes an impecable wit is enough to get you through.
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- By Jacopo della Quercia
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702
The 5 Most Impossible Sniper Shots Ever Made
Shooting from such a long range incurs a wide array of difficulties, leading to situations where making a successful shot is, by all logic and reason, impossible. It is in these situations where the best snipers sniff, wipe the sweat from their eyes and make the shot anyway.
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- By Xavier Jackson, James Benoist
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1502
The 8 Most Incredible Things Slapped Together in a Day
It's amazing what humanity can accomplish in a moment's notice.
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- By Christina H
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1080
5 Terrifying Killers (That Turned Out to be Mass Panics)
Humans are hard-wired to function in groups. But it's a double-edged sword -- it takes a lot of us to build a city, but as anyone who has ever witnessed a riot can attest, people's ability to act like idiots also multiplies in crowds. And this phenomenon can manifest itself in really weird and even fatal ways.
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- By Pauli Poisuo
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880
The 5 Most Badass Tales of Wartime Survival
Every single person on this list puts Bear Grylls' tales of 'badassery' to shame
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- By Chris J.
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724
The 5 Most Clearly Cursed Expeditions of All Time
We tend to romanticize the age of exploration, like it was all grand exotic frontiers and tiny people tying sailors down with ropes. What we don't hear about so often is the scurvy and the starvation and the months of endless walking through landscapes full of awfulness. And that's too bad, because it actually makes their stories that much more bad
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- By Eric Yosomono, Dustin Koski
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630
5 Historic Artifacts You Won't Believe Still Work
Unless you're talking about diamonds, Twinkies or vampires, lasting forever usually isn't in the cards. Yet all over the world -- and universe -- there are machines, engineering feats and pieces of meat that never got the memo that we all have a use-by date.
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- By Evan V. Symon
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770