But is there any history in the early past of it that this has ever happened?
No, Bitcoin has not had a 51% attack, as far as I'm aware.
Comparing the risk and reward ratio, attempting such an attack on Bitcoin would be very difficult to pull of. For one, it has a huge capital requirement to even attempt it, and there's no guarantee that the attacker would actually get any benefit from it.
The hashrate is also growing, making it more difficult with time.