De man bash , seção HISTORY EXPANSION :
Event Designators
An event designator is a reference to a command line entry in the history list. Unless the reference is absolute, events are relative to the current position in the history list.
[...]
!! - Refer to the previous command. This is a synonym for '!-1'
Você pode desativar a expansão do histórico com set +H se não gostar. Eu geralmente prefiro usar o readline para fazer pesquisas de histórico.