Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A mountain range shared by many nations

The Himalayas stretch across several countries, and Bhutan is one of them, tucked along the range's eastern edge. The mountains shape life far beyond their slopes: the snow and glaciers feeding Asia's great rivers, from the Ganges to the Brahmaputra, begin high in this region. Bhutan itself is a small kingdom known for measuring national progress by Gross National Happiness rather than GDP alone.

The giraffe's neck and a famous evolutionary puzzle

A giraffe's neck can be well over two metres long, yet it contains just seven vertebrae - the same number as a human neck. Each bone is simply enormously elongated. This oddity fascinated Charles Darwin, who used the giraffe as an example of natural selection in On the Origin of Species: longer-necked ancestors reached food more easily and passed the trait on.

Michael Jackson and the making of Beat It

Beat It appeared on Michael Jackson's 1982 album Thriller, the best-selling album of all time. The song's rock guitar solo was played by Eddie Van Halen, a rare crossover between pop and hard rock at the time. Its choreography, with Jackson leading rival gangs in a staged dance-off, helped cement the music video as a serious artistic form.

Platinum, aluminium and the logic of chemical symbols

Platinum takes the symbol Pt, while aluminium is Al. Some symbols come from Latin names rather than English ones: gold is Au, from aurum, and lead is Pb, from plumbum. Aluminium adds its own twist - British English uses the -ium spelling, while American English prefers aluminum, a difference that has persisted since the nineteenth century.

Milan, Italy's economic engine

Milan sits in northern Italy, in the Lombardy region, and is often described as the country's business and fashion capital. It is home to the Milan Stock Exchange and to fashion houses such as Prada and Versace. It also boasts Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper and the vast Duomo, one of Italy's largest cathedrals, which took centuries to complete.