Katherine Benjamin

Despite how awesome your fifth grade social studies teacher was, he or she didn't teach you everything there is to know about Ancient Egypt. And in reality, many of the larger-than-life "facts" you did learn were probably complete BS.

Since the United States is arguably the world powerhouse, it's easy to think everyone else must have us figured out by now. We export our music, our movies, and our military, so surely foreigners must know us inside and out. But it turns out there are still aspects of the USA that confuse the heck out of the rest of the world.

Some insects are beautiful. Some you could not want further away from you. We all flinch when we feel a creepy-crawly on our body, but no matter how you feel about them, there's a good chance you believe a few urban legends about them.

Magic isn't just for people who were lonely as children or thought it might be a way to pick up girls. It's also for the professionals, people who make a living out of pushing themselves farther than anyone else. But sometimes magic pushes back and tragedy can strike.

Of all the cool powers the president of the Unites States has, the best might be his ability to issue a pardon to anyone for anything. It's the world's greatest get out of jail free card.

There are millions of people out there who believe aliens have visited earth. Whether it's seeing a UFO, hearing secret messages, or a full-on alien abduction complete with anal probes, there's a conspiracy theory for everyone. One of the craziest is about the Black Knight satellite.

You know those days when nothing is going right and you wish you could just escape to a magical land where everything is unicorns and rainbows? Throughout history, people have actually believed in elusive places like these, but they've taken on very different mythologies.

When you are young and free, the summer is a time to be off school, travel, and lament that you aren't beach-body ready. But once you get a bit older, summer means one thing: Wedding season. Just, so many goddamn weddings.

Ed. Note: In order to get a jump on the second most anticipated birth in the history of humanity, and the first one not to involve a virgin, we here at Cracked decided to write the announcement ahead of time. Suck on that, competitors. Please note that in our rush to get you the facts as quickly as possible, some information might be slightly incorrect, and for that we apologize.

In many cases, the only reason you would even want to stay on is that being drunk with power makes you super attractive to the opposite sex.

Whether it was a theme park, a museum, or even that place that did the amazing barbecue ribs, we've all visited somewhere we wished we could stay in forever. Good news!

Most of us didn't learn about, say, the Wild West by visiting a research library and poring over Oklahoma manure industry receipts from 1896. No, chances are you learned your Old West history by watching stuff like Tombstone or Cowboys & Aliens or Hey Dude.

Most of us can't afford to escape a future doomsday by hunkering down in a bunker or circling the planet on a space station, but we can afford a few gadgets to make us feel better about the fact that the earth is definitely mad at us and wants to kill us all very soon.