Interesting. This little bug comes up a lot on HN and is usually just that -- a bug. In this case, it seems that the "breaking" of the back button here was intentional based on the line comment[0]. What was the initial reasoning for that?
the reason was grid scroll using touchpad on OSX, when you swipe the grid from left to right there is 50% chance of losing web console due to back button being triggered by the same motion.
Ah, surprisingly good reason (:
That's especially for people like you that love to find an easter egg.