If you middle-click the refresh button in chrome it clones the current tab with history. You can also middle click the back button to clone the previous page in a new tab with history preserved.
Thanks. The main problem is that there doesn't seem to be a way to access it by keyboard. Secondly, it's also not possible to convert a tab to a separate window by keyboard. So what is a single keypress on IE becomes a cumbersome operation.
Thank you, I didn't know that!! I always wondered why there is no shortcut to duplicate the current tab.