“History is not the past.
The semantic problem is not helped by the fact that in English we tend to use the words ‘history’ and ‘the past’ interchangeably. One of the most useful things you can do in studying history is to begin to use the words to signify very different things. The past is a term used to indicate all the events which occurred before a given point in time: everything that has ever happened to everyone, everywhere at any time before now. The past is neither the present nor the future.”
http://www.internationalschoolhistory.net/tok/what_history_is_and_isnt.htm
TOK Topics 