We don’t say an history

There is a rule that words that begin with "h" but whose emphasis is not on the first syllable should use the article "an" instead of "a". I do this myself out of habit, but this is definitely one rule that could disappear tomorrow and no one would miss it. I suspect it will be forgotten almost entirely in another couple of decades.

We always "took a meeting." I don't know if anyone outside that industry used it back then. That was the first time I heard it (Los Angeles) but everyone used it. We "took a lunch" sometimes afterwards.

EDIT: My personal opinion even at the time was that this was to make these things sound much more important than they actually were. "Taking a meeting" and "taking a lunch" was actually part of your job, which is ridiculous. Rarely was anything important accomplished. Maybe one out of eight of these was important.

Guess people believe it makes them sound more worldly.

And in fact often yields the same result.