Is Astronomy Necessary?

It’s going to be an eclipse free day for me today. I forgot the ancient law passed by King Henry II which states: Upon whichsoever day something of astronomical interest mayhap, then thee King’s Man sharl drag forth clouds to cover the land. Thus thee peoples of thys island sharl be able to worke undistracted.

So hopefully I’ll finish the slides for my talk today. I found this clip on the QI site which sums up the spirit of the talk. Do you need to refer to astronomy to explain something?