I like knowing the history of topics I am interested in to see how such knowledge came to be, and where forks in the road gave way to divisions of such understanding.

Case in point, seeing the history of the Pokemon franchise allows us to see how & why certain features were included & excluded in each successive generation, and also gives way to discussing inspiration for future releases.

In the case of geopolitics, having some knowledge of the history of reality could allow one to be less manipulated by political actors that would most likely serve you a bill of goods for their benefit.

I suppose another way to state the significance of historical knowledge would be to increase one's awareness of the present situation, and help one to make future choices with less unnecessary suffering.