In addition to the possibility to view/edit your ~/.bash_history manually, I’ve collected some little tips for the bash history:

  • Hide single commands from the bash history
    If your command line begins with a space character, it won’t be logged.

  • Log a command for later execution
    If you’ve just typed a long command line and realized that there’s other stuff to do before executing it, jump to its beginning (with Home) and type #. The command will then be treated as comment and won’t be executed. As soon as you’ve finished running all the other instructions use the history to get back to your comment. Remove the # and execute it.

  • disable .bash_history file
    one simple way to disable the .bash_history file is to remove the write permission to it: 
    chmod -w ~/.bash_history

    If you first edit your .bash_history file manually you can turn it into a permanent history list with all your favourite commands.

  • use the reverse search
    press Ctrl+R and then enter your search string. To edit the command (and exit the search mode) use tab or one of the position keys.

    The reverse-i-search always brings you the first match before the current history position

  • full history processing
    The history command lists the whole saved bash command history.

    You could use it e.g. to show the last 10 commands:

    history|tail -n 10

    or to show all lines containing the word ssh

    history|grep ssh

  • execute the last matching command
    If you want to run a command several times without scrolling through the history all the time you can use the ! at the start of the line to execute the last line that starts with your search string, e.g.:

    !ssh

    will re-run the last invocation of ssh

  • clear local history
    To clear the session history (not the one in .bash_history) call

    history -c
  • read/write history
    If you have multiple sessions running and want to get the local history of one session to another one, you can use 
    history -a

    to append the local history to .bash_history in the first terminal and

    history -r

    in the second terminal to read .bash_history

    Those parameters can also be combined (read man bash for detailed information)