Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

An island kingdom in the Gulf

Bahrain is a small archipelago in the Persian Gulf, connected to Saudi Arabia by a causeway and sitting just off the coast of Qatar. Its name comes from the Arabic for "two seas", a nod to the fresh springs that bubble up beneath the surrounding salt water. Long known for pearling, Bahrain was among the first places in the region to strike oil, and its capital, Manama, has grown into a regional banking hub.

Hardy's Wessex and its doomed mayor

Thomas Hardy set The Mayor of Casterbridge in a fictional town modelled on Dorchester, the Dorset county town where he grew up. The novel opens with a shocking act: a man sells his wife and daughter at a fair, then rises to become mayor before his past catches up with him. Hardy called his invented corner of south-west England "Wessex", and it provides the setting for most of his fiction.

Why Finland chose a bear

The brown bear is Finland's national animal, a fitting emblem for a country where the species has long been surrounded by folklore and even worshipped in pre-Christian times. Bears still roam Finnish forests, though they are shy and rarely seen. The animal also appears on the coat of arms of several Finnish regions and features in the Finnish word for bear, "karhu", which itself was once avoided in speech as a respectful euphemism.

Reading the periodic table

Cobalt takes its symbol, Co, from the German "Kobold", meaning goblin or mischievous spirit - miners blamed the element for troublesome ores. Its neighbours on the table are easy to confuse: Cl is chlorine and Ca is calcium, so a single letter makes a large difference. Cobalt gives glass and ceramics a deep blue colour and is a key ingredient in many rechargeable batteries.

The world's largest glacier

The Lambert Glacier in East Antarctica is the largest glacier on Earth, draining a vast portion of the ice sheet into the Amery Ice Shelf. It is roughly 400 kilometres long and up to 60 kilometres wide in places. By contrast, Iceland's Vatnajökull is one of Europe's largest ice caps, and Argentina's Perito Moreno is famous for its dramatic calving walls rather than its size.