diff --git a/railties/CHANGELOG b/railties/CHANGELOG
index 835f652703..62e395e6d5 100644
--- a/railties/CHANGELOG
+++ b/railties/CHANGELOG
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 *SVN*
 
+* Fixed default 404.html and 500.htmls to remove extreme ugliness and include human language [DHH]
+
 * Update to latest Prototype and script.aculo.us trunk versions [Thomas Fuchs]
 
 * PostgreSQL: db:test:purge closes open database connections first.  #6236 [alex]
diff --git a/railties/html/404.html b/railties/html/404.html
index 0e1845619d..78295d4258 100644
--- a/railties/html/404.html
+++ b/railties/html/404.html
@@ -1,8 +1,47 @@
-<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
-   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
-<html>
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
+       "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+
+<head>
+  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
+  <title>The page you were looking for doesn't exist (404)</title>
+	<style type="text/css">
+    div.dialog {
+    	margin: 0;
+    	padding: 10px;
+    	text-align: left;
+    	border: 1px solid #ccc;
+    	border-right: 1px solid #999;
+    	border-bottom: 1px solid #999;
+    	background-color: #fff;
+    	}
+
+  	div.outer {
+  		position: absolute;
+  		left: 50%;
+  		top: 50%;
+  		width: 500px;
+  		height: 300px;
+  		margin-left: -260px; 
+  		margin-top: -150px;
+  	}
+
+  	body { background-color: #fff; }
+	</style>
+</head>
+
 <body>
-  <h1>File not found</h1>
-  <p>Change this error message for pages not found in public/404.html</p>
+
+<div class="outer">
+  <!-- This file lives in public/404.html -->
+
+  <div class="dialog" style="text-align: center;">
+    <div style="text-align: center; width: 200px; margin: 0 auto;">
+    <p style="color: red; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">The page you were looking for doesn't exist.</p>
+    <p style="color: #666;">You may have mistyped the address or the page may have moved.</p>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
 </body>
 </html>
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/railties/html/500.html b/railties/html/500.html
index 146b216bfd..7a2af943d9 100644
--- a/railties/html/500.html
+++ b/railties/html/500.html
@@ -1,8 +1,47 @@
-<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
-   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
-<html>
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
+       "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+
+<head>
+  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
+  <title>We're sorry, but something went wrong</title>
+	<style type="text/css">
+    div.dialog {
+    	margin: 0;
+    	padding: 10px;
+    	text-align: left;
+    	border: 1px solid #ccc;
+    	border-right: 1px solid #999;
+    	border-bottom: 1px solid #999;
+    	background-color: #fff;
+    	}
+
+  	div.outer {
+  		position: absolute;
+  		left: 50%;
+  		top: 50%;
+  		width: 500px;
+  		height: 300px;
+  		margin-left: -260px; 
+  		margin-top: -150px;
+  	}
+
+  	body { background-color: #fff; }
+	</style>
+</head>
+
 <body>
-  <h1>Application error</h1>
-  <p>Change this error message for uncaught exceptions in public/500.html</p>
+
+<div class="outer">
+  <!-- This file lives in public/500.html -->
+
+  <div class="dialog" style="text-align: center;">
+    <div style="text-align: center; width: 200px; margin: 0 auto;">
+    <p style="color: red; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">We're sorry, but something went wrong.</p>
+    <p style="color: #666;">We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly.</p>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
 </body>
 </html>
\ No newline at end of file
