Ctrl-r was right there.

CTRL+R

It's either this or history | grep 'some-command'.

You forgot a couple down arrows for when you overshoot.

history

!982

If you're in this picture try using fzf and backwards search, much more effective, hell even without fzf.

ls

🐟🐟🐟

Introducing: fish

And then you just need to remember the first letters of the previously typed command

The command you want is in the buffered history of a still running terminal that's doing something you don't want to close 💀

Some of you haven't read the bash manual and it shows.

Blow your mind to know about bang patterns. You've used !! but do you know about !$?

If you haven't, try McFly - is a much better backwards / history search in the shell.