Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A ceremony that started small

The first Academy Awards were handed out in 1929, and the whole thing was over in about fifteen minutes. Around 270 guests attended a dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and winners had already been told in advance. The statuette only picked up the nickname "Oscar" later, and the origin of that name is still debated.

A friendship that outgrew its book

Huckleberry Finn first appears as Tom Sawyer's closest companion in Mark Twain's 1876 novel. Readers took to him so strongly that Twain gave him his own book in 1884, "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", often called the first great American novel. Tom, notably, almost disappears from its pages.

Titanium: light, strong and hard to extract

Titanium carries the symbol Ti, and it earns its keep in aerospace, medical implants and eyewear because it is both light and remarkably strong. Its real difficulty lies in refining it: the metal reacts readily with oxygen and nitrogen, which is why pure titanium only became practical to produce on a large scale in the twentieth century.

The Mediterranean has a long guest list

Turkey sits on the Mediterranean coast, with a shoreline along its south that runs for well over a thousand kilometres. Belgium and Estonia, the other options, both face other waters entirely: the North Sea and the Baltic respectively. The Mediterranean itself touches three continents, which is part of why it has shaped trade and cuisine for millennia.

Croissants and where they really come from

France is the country most associated with the croissant, and it is where the pastry became the flaky, buttery staple we know today. The shape, however, has older roots in Austrian baking traditions, which is why the French still sometimes call it a "Viennese" pastry. Either way, a proper one is made with laminated dough, folded and rolled repeatedly.