Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A Nobel laureate with a taste for the unexpected

Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018, though the award was announced a year later after a scandal delayed the ceremony. Flights, published in English in 2017, is one of her best-known works. It blends travel writing, fiction and philosophy into a form that resists easy labels, following characters who are constantly in motion. Tokarczuk has said she prefers to call her books "constellation novels" rather than traditional narratives.

The last Olympics of the Cold War era

The 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles were held at a tense moment in global politics. The Soviet Union and several allied nations boycotted the Games, mirroring the American-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics four years earlier. Despite the absences, the 1984 Games were a financial success and introduced commercial sponsorship on a scale the Olympics had not seen before. Carl Lewis won four gold medals, matching Jesse Owens's 1936 achievement.

The boxer who became a global symbol

Muhammad Ali first won the world heavyweight championship in 1964, when he was still known as Cassius Clay. Over the following two decades he became one of the most recognisable figures on the planet, celebrated as much for his political courage as for his ring skills. He refused induction into the US Army during the Vietnam War and was stripped of his title as a result. Parkinson's syndrome later limited his public appearances, but he remained a global ambassador until his death in 2016.

A country that straddles the equator

Brazil is the only country in the quiz that lies on both hemispheres, since the equator passes through its northern region. Most of its population and its largest cities, including Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, sit south of the line. The north, home to much of the Amazon rainforest, lies above it. This position gives Brazil a tropical climate across most of its territory.

The moon landing that defined a decade

On 20 July 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. Around 600 million people watched the broadcast, one of the largest television audiences in history at the time. The mission fulfilled a goal set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, and it remains one of the most cited events of the 20th century.