You also might check out the event designator "!", which lets you quickly print (with or without executing) the most recent command that starts with a certain string.
Contrived example:
Code:
[fugu ~]$ history
11 file /etc/sysconfig/iptables
12 ls
13 top
14 history
[fugu ~]$ !file:p
file /etc/sysconfig/iptables
The
:p modifier tells bash to print but not execute the command.
In any case, that still doesn't sound like quite what you're looking for; check out the extensive manpages for bash(1). There's a good sized section on history and related topics there.