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The term "history" comes from the Greek historia, "an account of one's inquiries," and shares that etymology with the English word story. It does not come from the word his, however some feminists have coined the term herstory to refer to history from a female perspective. (see non-sexist language)


There is a very large amount of historical information available in Wikipedia, and several different ways of classifying it are given below.

History classified by location: History classified by date:

Miscellaneous classifications, not necessarily part of academic history studies:

A typical academic classification:

A form of historical speculation known commonly as virtual history (also called "counterfactual history") been adopted by some historians as a means of assessing and exploring the possible outcomes if certain events had not occurred or had occurred in a different way to that which they did.

You may also want to see dubious historical resources and historical myths for a list of false beliefs and histories which were once or are now popular and widespread, but which are proven to be false or dubious.

See also pseudohistory for more about uncritical history.

See also: Archaeology, Historian

What are our priorities for writing in this area? To help develop a list of the most basic topics in History, please see History basic topics.

A guideline for contributions to Wikipedia in the field of history can be found at Wikipedia History standards.

For a discussion of NPOV and history in this context see also: Can history be truly NPOV?



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Virtual history

... there are Victorian examples of virtual history, it was not until the 20th century that the exploration of counterfactual positions was to begin in earnest. An early ...