This closes #667

docs/hacking-guide/en/SUMMARY.md

@@ -8,4 +8,5 @@
 * [Code Formatting](formatting.md)
 * [Validating releases](validating-releases.md)
 * [Notes for Maintainers](maintainers.md)
+* [History](history.md)
 

docs/hacking-guide/en/history.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+History
+=======
+
+The Apache ActiveMQ Artemis project was started in October 2014. The Artemis code base was seeded with a code donation granted by Red Hat, of the HornetQ project. The code donation process consisted of taking a snapshot of the latest HornetQ code base and contributing this snapshot as an [initial git commit](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ARTEMIS-1) into the Artemis git repository.
+
+The HornetQ commit history is preserved and can be accessed here: [https://github.com/hornetq/hornetq/tree/apache-donation](https://github.com/hornetq/hornetq/tree/apache-donation)
+
+Credit should be given to those developers who contributed to the HornetQ project. The top 10 committers are highlighted here:
+
+- Clebert Suconic
+- Tim Fox
+- Francisco Borges
+- Andy Taylor
+- Jeff Mesnil
+- Ovidiu Feodorov
+- Howard Gao
+- Justin Bertram
+- Trustin Lee
+- Adrian Brock
+
+For more information please visit the [HornetQ GitHub project](https://github.com/hornetq/hornetq/tree/apache-donation).