From the practical to the personal, history does have its uses. This is not a popular opinion among those wholly invested in the now, the new, the disposable present that seems to them disconnected from anything that ever was or will be. In actuality, every aspect of life on any given day has a long and complex history that resulted in its present appearance. Every smell, sight or sound, every building or lamppost or vending machine came to be through a knotty web of stories dating all the way back to the founding of human civilization.
Perhaps that's going back a little far for most people's purposes. Even so, there's merit to knowing where things come from. A man buying a corned beef sandwich from his favorite deli probably isn't thinking about more than how much he likes corned beef sandwiches, and may not consider that there's a story behind his sandwich, his deli and even his own ability to walk freely into an establishment and order. Some of these stories will be practical, some personal, and some just plain amusing. That's one bonus aspect of studying history: entertainment. Despite what you may have learned in public school history classes, history can be interesting. People rave about the excitement in movies, books and television, but as good as some of those inventions are, nothing in fiction can compare to what has happened in reality. Imagine a ruler so disillusioned by his own society that he does all he can to destroy it, a noblewoman turned pirate to avenge the death of her husband, a child political prisoner growing up to become the most bloodthirsty scourge of his captors, or a pope screaming excommunication down on siege armies. (If you've ever heard the phrase, "You cannot make this up!" this is where it surely applies.)
Still, if the man at the deli has no interest in the wealth of compelling, personal stories about American immigrant culture provided by the legacy of the delicatessen, he may instead be interested in any number of food industry stories connected with the safety of the consumer, or that may affect his ability to continue to buy from his favorite place in the future. From a practical perspective, history can be a gateway to learning everything about human civilization, even what might happen. On the small scale, a knowledgeable person might be able to predict what could happen in person-to-person interactions based on what they have learned about the interplay of each person's cultural history. Too, predictions can be made about the interactions of businesses, while considering what has happened before in the history of the business and its industry. On a larger scale, governments also operate based on a long list of successes and failures. Knowing what happened to yours and other governments in the past can greatly aid in understanding the decisions made today and what may develop in the future.
This is where patterns become clear. Modern events are better-analyzed in the hands of historians, as they are already aware of what has been done in similar situations, by whom, and how well they fared. They can also remember what happened next. While most regular people express shock over the suddenness of major world problems such as economic crisis, those well-versed in the history of financial collapse have often predicted the outcome months or years in advance. This is not the dead history ridiculed by the cult of "now," no; this history is alive, and eminently sensible to know. Civilization moves in cycles. The man at the deli reads "The Jungle," and wonders why he's reading "Fast Food Nation" the next week. Everything that has happened, all that is terrible and good, always happens again.
Santayana's old aphorism is true: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." As to who Santayana is and why he said this, well: that's history.