.bash_history currently keeps all the duplicate entries if you for example type the same line twice. That's annoying when you search through the history.
By exporting HISTCONTROL="ignoreboth" duplicates and lines starting with a space will be ignored.

It would be nice to have this as default for every user so I'd suggest to add this to the appropriate place (/etc/bashrc or /etc/profile or what else suits)

excerpt from "man bash":
       HISTCONTROL
              A  colon-separated  list  of values controlling how commands are
              saved on the history list.   If  the  list  of  values  includes
              ignorespace,  lines  which  begin with a space character are not
              saved in the history list.  A value of ignoredups  causes  lines
              matching the previous history entry to not be saved.  A value of
              ignoreboth is shorthand for ignorespace and ignoredups.  A value
              of erasedups causes all previous lines matching the current line
              to be removed from the history list before that line  is  saved.
              Any  value  not in the above list is ignored.  If HISTCONTROL is
              unset, or does not include a valid value, all lines read by  the
              shell parser are saved on the history list, subject to the value
              of HISTIGNORE.  The second and subsequent lines of a  multi-line
              compound  command  are  not tested, and are added to the history
              regardless of the value of HISTCONTROL.