Tips & Tricks: Getting more out of Opportunity History Reports

Opportunity History Reports are f*cking awesome, they allow you to see the complete lifecycle of the Opportunity tracking changes to the "core" Opportunity Metrics: Amount, Stage, Close Date, Probability%, Forecast Category. And unlike Field History Reports they're available right out of the box and immediately have access to historical data from "Day 1" of your SFDC org.  In other words: they work retroactively.  They also have more robust Field Filtering, and access to Cross-Filters (they also don't look like they fell out of the top of the Ugly Tree and hit every branch on the way down).
 
However Opportunity History Reports do have an Achilles’ Heel:  You can’t easily see or filter by the current Stage, Amount, Probability%, Close Date, Forecast Category.  But you can do this (and whole lot more!) just by adding a few simple Formula Fields to the Opportunity Object.  Now some folks are probably saying: 

“I don’t want to add more formula fields, I don’t want my Opportunity to look like a Race Car at the Daytona 500!”. 

Here’s the thing; you don’t need to add the new fields to the Opportunity Page Layout, you just need to give the Users/Profiles “Read” access to the Data in the fields.  So you can keep your precious Opportunity Page layouts as pure as the driven snow in an Ansel Adams landscape.
 
Anyway, it's just an idea that I came up with.  I’m like Leonardo DaVinci, my mind is full of ideas...  although most of them are about as useless as a Wooden Helicopter powered by ropes and pulleys. 
 
And now without further ado here are the fields:
 
Current Stage
Datatype = Formula
Result = Text
Formula = TEXT(StageName)
 
Current Close Date
Datatype = Formula
Result = Date
Formula = CloseDate
 
Current Probability%
Datatype = Formula
Result = Percent 0 decimals
Formula = Probability
 
Current Amount
Datatype = Formula
Result = Currency
Formula = Amount
 
Current Forecast Category
Datatype = Formula
Result = Text
Formula = TEXT(ForecastCategoryName)