Bukoski actually makes lots of 'historical refrences' in his stories, especially poetry. Whether is be recounting the tale of some mock communist army pillaging a village or a sentence or two commenting on Hitler, Stalin, burning Buddhists or references to 'important' literary figures and thinkers of the years.
They are amazing as well, because he just notes them or makes interesting comments which often lead people to investigate these people/things further, without having to have some grand lecture from a professor.
The greatest historical fact he every recorded was the great anticlimax and anonymity of just about everyones everyday suffering and life and death. Everyone is either great because they amount to nothing or amount to nothing because they weren't great.
Mind, Bukowski was certianly not the type to write a novel about 'A young man struggling with testicular cancer set against back drop of 19th Century miners strike during the reign of margaret thatcher.' It wasn't what he was writing for and quite right at that.