I’ve only noticed this in the past week. And on at least 3 different computers. In the dropdown list of the URL bar (or when you begin to type a url), there are what appear to be names of websites with a .url extension above the normal list of actual urls (http://website.com/gibberishnumbersandstuff)
How can this suddenly be happening on 3 different machines, none of which have had an IE upgrade?
Your favorites have a .URL extension on them. So maybe when you use your favorites, it counts them in the history as recently browsed in the address bar.
But why only recently? I’ve used the internet for years, almost every day, and my behaviour hasn’t changed as far as I am aware.
Now that you mention it though, I just checked, and the things on the list are things I have in my favourites.