Clearing history in Chrome is hard. Right now, the process looks like this:

(1) Select Clear Browsing Data… from the Chrome menu on Mac, *or* [Wrench] → More Tools on any platform. Or, visit chrome://history and click the Clear Browsing Data… button. chrome://settings/clearBrowserData will open in:
    - If the current tab is the NTP or chrome://history: the current tab.
    - Else: a new tab.
(2) You'll see a dialog with eight(!!) checkboxes and a dropdown to select time range. Do whatever.
(3) You'll end up at chrome://settings. If you go back, you'll end up back at the "clear browsing data" dialog. To get back to where you were, you'll either have to close the tab or click back twice, depending on what happened in (1).

For comparison:

Safari: 
(1) Select Clear History… from the Safari menu *or* the History menu. You'll see a modal sheet with a dropdown to select time range.
(2) Do whatever, then the sheet goes away.

Firefox:
(1) Select Clear Recent History… from the History menu. You'll see a modal dialog with a dropdown to select time range and a (default closed) disclosure triangle to select what exactly to clear.
(2) Do whatever, then the dialog goes away.