1. [n]  the discipline that records and interprets past events involving human beings; "he teaches Medieval history"; "history takes the long view"
2. [n]  all that is remembered of the past as preserved in writing; a body of knowledge; "the dawn of recorded history"; "from the beginning of history"
3. [n]  a record or narrative description of past events; "a history of France"; "he gave an inaccurate account of the plot to kill the president"; "the story of exposure to lead"
4. [n]  the aggregate of past events; "a critical time in the school's history"
5. [n]  the continuum of events occurring in succession leading from the past to the present and even into the future; "all of human history"

1. \His"to*ry\, n.; pl. {Histories}. [L. historia, Gr.
   'istori`a history, information, inquiry, fr. 'istwr, "istwr,
   knowing, learned, from the root of ? to know; akin to E. wit.
   See {Wit}, and cf. {Story}.]
   1. A learning or knowing by inquiry; the knowledge of facts
      and events, so obtained; hence, a formal statement of such
      information; a narrative; a description; a written record;
      as, the history of a patient's case; the history of a
      legislative bill.
   2. A systematic, written account of events, particularly of
      those affecting a nation, institution, science, or art,
      and usually connected with a philosophical explanation of
      their causes; a true story, as distinguished from a
      romance; -- distinguished also from annals, which relate
      simply the facts and events of each year, in strict
      chronological order; from biography, which is the record
      of an individual's life; and from memoir, which is history
      composed from personal experience, observation, and
      memory.
            Histories are as perfect as the historian is wise,
            and is gifted with an eye and a soul. --Carlyle.
            For aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by
            tale or history.                      --Shak.
            What histories of toil could I declare! --Pope.
   {History piece}, a representation in painting, drawing, etc.,
      of any real event, including the actors and the action.
   {Natural history}, a description and classification of
      objects in nature, as minerals, plants, animals, etc., and
      the phenomena which they exhibit to the senses.
   Syn: Chronicle; annals; relation; narration.
   Usage: {History}, {Chronicle}, {Annals}. History is a
          methodical record of important events which concern a
          community of men, usually so arranged as to show the
          connection of causes and effects, to give an analysis
          of motive and action etc. A chronicle is a record of
          such events, conforming to the order of time as its
          distinctive feature. Annals are a chronicle divided up
          into separate years. By poetic license annals is
          sometimes used for history.
                Justly C[ae]sar scorns the poet's lays; It is to
                history he trusts for praise.     --Pope.
                No more yet of this; For 't is a chronicle of
                day by day, Not a relation for a breakfast.
                                                  --Shak.
                Many glorious examples in the annals of our
                religion.                         --Rogers.
   

2. \His"to*ry\, v. t.
   To narrate or record. [Obs.] --Shak.
   

1. A record of previous user inputs (e.g. to a command interpreter) which can be re-entered without re-typing them. The major improvement of the C shell (csh) over the Bourne shell (sh) was the addition of a command history. This was still inferior to the history mechanism on VMS which allowed you to recall previous commands as the current input line. You could then edit the command using cursor motion, insert and delete. These sort of history editing facilities are available under tcsh and GNU Emacs.

2. The history of computing.

3. See Usenet newsgroups news:soc.history and news:alt.history for discussion of the history of the world.