The story
In a similar form (“that great dust heap called ‘history’”) used by English essayist Augustine Birrell in 1887 (but in use before), popularized by Leon Trotsky in reference to the Mensheviks (1917).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
trash heap of history
Today it means: A notional place where events, people or objects which have been forgotten or have become irrelevant from a historical perspective are placed or recorded. Full definition →