When people set out to design a data driven application, they usually end up updating and deleting records.
FTFY...
It's not hard to build history into a SQL table design. You can even store events in a...wait for it... SQL database. I have built numerous systems backed by SQL databases that have complete history retention. Answering questions like 'who had id 'X' on this date 3 years ago' are easily solvable with basic standard sql.
I certainly don't believe SQL databases are perfect or the tool for every job, but in many cases they work just fine until you get into very large datasets. Admittedly, I only deal with databases in the 100s of GB range so I have yet to personally run into the scaling problems that a Google or Facebook have and the SQL backed systems I have built work just fine.