Website using url-rewriting won't load in Chrome!

I have a PHP page named contact.php and a rewrite rule in .htaccess RewriteRule ^(.*).html $1\.php [L]

that gives contact.php when asked for contact.html.

All pages work (in Firefox and IE), but when I enter the site with Chrome, it only loads the index page, and the others don't work at all - I get a 404 error.

I don't think this is a server problem (I am using Ubuntu 8.04 server). I think this is a browser issue, but still unexplained ...

Anyone have a clue?