We've worked long and hard here at Cracked to make it clear that the past was badass. All you have to do is sift through old-timey photos, and you quickly realize that people back then possessed neither sanity nor a sense of self-preservation.
At least half of the bad people in the world avoid trying to change because they insist nothing is their fault. It's all due to their childhood, or their genes -- their temper, their weight, their bad habits -- all of it is outside of their control. It's bullshit, right? Well ... not entirely.
If you aren't currently living in a country occupied by a hostile army, you can't really imagine what it's like knowing that trying to leave home means getting your head blown off. But when people want out badly enough, they find a way. And those ways are absolutely amazing.
It turns out that a lot of the things that annoy us about daily existence are just inevitable parts of larger systems and smaller systems that can be just as easily explained away by science.
There are entire real government programs devoted solely to thinking up ways to counter weather-themed supervillains and other outlandish threats normally relegated to the realm of science fiction.
History has shown that through no fault of your own, you can be revered as some religion's immortal deity. All you need is to be in the right place at the right time.
We usually think of fighter pilots as kick ass cowboys of the sky, living out our video game fantasies and handing out bitchin' nicknames all day long. But today's fighter pilots have nothing on the first of their kind -- the ones who appeared in the first world war.
Animals aren't extremely ambitious. Sometimes, however, all they need is a little helpful prodding in the right direction to start conquering everything around them like warlords.
We all have personal failures and weaknesses, but a president will work so hard at crafting a specific public persona that we're shocked every time one gets in a sticky situation. With that in mind, here are some of the stranger facts about American presidents that almost never get mentioned in history class.
