HISTORY Here is the kind of informational app that will surprise as much as educate, and that’s rarely a bad thing.

The app doesn’t waste much time, offering to let you search near your location to see which, if any, of the app’s “thousands” of points of interest are near your current locale. If you’re looking for the info on a location of which you’re not currently within searching distance, HISTORY Here lets you input a city or zip code of your choice and search that way.

Whichever your method of discovery, HISTORY Here works impressively. Hanging out near my folks’ house in a sleepy Illinois suburb I gave the app a whirl and was surprised to find quite a few interesting spots I had never known were in the area. Of course there were dozens more points of interest in Chicago proper, but it was still neat to see the app wasn’t just servicing major metro areas.

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Once you find a location you want to know more about you can tap on its flag on the map and read a description of the area and pull up an address, phone number and website where applicable. From there you can favorite a location for quick reference later or share it on the Facebook, Twitter or via email.

While HISTORY Here is a perfect companion app when on vacation in a place you want to know more about, it can be surprisingly informative if you use it in your own backyard, too. It might not provide encyclopedic levels of insight on its points of interest but it’s a nice reference app to keep nearby.