Re: despite every audience member knowing how things will play out,
"So my history was pretty narrow. But then I either learned about Pompeii from reading books, telly or latin lessons. OK, that last does make me sound old..."
I learned about the Krakatoa eruption in Maths :-)
The teacher was giving us a mnemonic for trigonometry, SOHCAHTOA, which sounds like Krakatoa but some/many of the class didn't get the reference, so Maths turned into history for about 15 minutes.