go down in history

go down in history (third-person singular simple present goes down in history, present participle going down in history, simple past went down in history, past participle gone down in history)

1. Be sufficiently noteworthy as to be remembered by future generations.

   Synonym: make history

   • 2018 September 14, Derek Coleman, “Old superstition comes true with tragic consequences”, in AP News‎, archived from the original on December 03, 2023‎:

     Many of the dead were never identified simply because whole families died together and there was no one left to say who they were. One woman, named Elizabeth Stride, claimed to have been one of the survivors of the sinking, although there was no proof of this. She would later go down in history as the third victim of Jack the Ripper.

   • 2021 February 6, Graham Bean, “Scotland beat England at Twickenham for the first time in 38 years”, in The Scotsman‎:

     Captain Stuart Hogg and his team will now go down in history as the side who were able to slay England in their own den, emulating Jim Aitken’s heroes of ’83.

   • 2021 April 15, “From United Kingdom to Untied Kingdom”, in The Economist‎, →ISSN:

     Mr Johnson was elected Prime Minister to get Brexit done. […] His single most important task for the rest of his term in office is to hold the Union together. If he fails, he will go down in history not as the man who freed the United Kingdom, but as the man who destroyed it.

• “go down in history” (US) / “go down in history” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.
• “go down in history”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “go down in history”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “something will go down in history” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.