I shocked the educated English guy next to me at work, when I gave a reference to "The harrowing of the north".
Not exactly the most obscure part of English history, but still not well known. Control of information isn't new.
The fun part will all the Chomsky thing is that in my native Sweden, you have totally different influences on the news media than USA. E.g. left wing extremists have a large space, political discussion are often done by interviewing political left extremists (Gardell, Hubinette, Guillou, etc).
But you see lots of "manufactured consent", lots of head line news stories at BBC/NY Times just doesn't show up. Etc.
