Safari will not clear history

Question

I am unable to clear some old history from Safari on my retina macbook pro with mavericks.  Reset, private browsing, clear cache, clear history, deleting com.apple.safai.plist - nothing works.  History from Ocotber 2013 returns every time, as well as two windows I do not want to automatically open.  What a pain.  Suggestions?

Answer 1

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Safari/History.plist
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Show Info in Finder (or just Show Info)
from the contextual menu.* An Info dialog should open.
Does the dialog show "You can read and write" in the Sharing & Permissions section?
In the General section, is the box labeled Locked checked?
What is the Modified date?
If you don't have read and write access to the item, change the settings as directed here. Note, however, that if one file has wrong access settings, most likely others do as well. If the item is locked, unlock it.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Open a TextEdit window and paste into it (command-V). Select the line you just pasted and continue as above.