A important message

There is a rule in English grammar that concerns the word 'a'. Basically when you are using the word 'a', if the word that follows it starts with a vowel (a,e,i,o,u), then you use the word 'an'. Otherwise, you can stick with 'a'. It is a fairly simple rule. Now English, being the ornery cuss that it is, decided to throw in a twist. Sometimes when the word following 'a' starts with an 'h', the word 'an' is used instead. That is why it is correct to say "it is an honour to meet a hockey player". Unless you hate hockey players, in which case you would never say that anyway. All things considered, it is quite a minor twist on a simple rule, almost as though English was just adding a token twist and not going for anything to hard, such as the 'i' before 'e' rue ('i' before 'e', except after 'c', or when sounding long 'a' as in 'neighbour' or 'weigh', or on holidays or weekends and all throughout May, and you'll always be wrong no matter WHAT you say. Now that's a tough rule).
However (now I am super conscious of when I am using 'h' words), people are not satisfied with that simplicity. They have to overthink it and get it wrong, consistently. I am constantly assaulted with the following phrase: "an historic", as in "the election of Barack Obama is an historic ocassion for the world because apparently nowhere in the world has a minority of any kind ever had any sort of power and the USA is the first to do it (there certainly have never been any women leaders because in the USA women have been considered inferior and unelectable, so women never rule a country, especially in a democracy...SHUT UP BRITAIN!)" Sorry.
But say the word "history". Go on, say it aloud to yourself. "History." "History". "History". Unless you are British (where women are never elected to lead because the USA hasn't had a female president yet!), you are saying the 'h' very clearly when you say 'history', or 'historical', or 'historocity', or any variation thereof. So WHY DO PEOPLE USE 'AN' IN FRONT OF IT!!!
Seriously, it drives me nuts! It is one of those things that people seem to do because it makes them sound scholarly, so they think. But they are wrong, 'history' does not need 'an'. It is not a vowel. Because the 'h' in 'history' is softer than the 'h' in 'hockey', it becomes lost if you say 'an historical'. The 'an' makes it 'an istorical', and 'istorical' is not a word unless you are British (we refuse to acknowledge the existence of Margeret Thatcher - she was a crazy mass delusion brought on by living in Britain and not seeing the sun more than a couple of times a decade).
It wouldn't surprise me if I was 'technically' wrong, the 'an historical' is accepted as correct, but just because everyone does it does not mean it is correct.
There, I feel better.