One of the few reasons got the .ico file format to exist is that you can put multiple icon sizes in it, so just include some larger variants.
Are you talking about browser history? Because it seems to work just fine. If you're talking about something else, it can't be that popular. I've never heard of it, and a search is not very illuminating either.
It's the "Recent Sites" list that appears e.g. when you open up chrome or a new firefox tab by default.
Or literally just focus the URL bar in mobile Safari, and I suspect most other mobile browsers are similar.