Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

Twelve animals, and one that got away

The Chinese zodiac assigns an animal to each year in a repeating twelve-year cycle: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. The turtle is not among them, though it looms large elsewhere in Chinese culture, where it traditionally symbolises longevity and wisdom. The cycle is tied to the lunar calendar, which is why Chinese New Year falls on a different date each January or February.

A shuttle with a fitting name

Discovery was one of NASA's five orbital space shuttles, named after two historic exploring ships. It flew more missions than any other orbiter in the fleet, including the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 and a return to flight after the Challenger and Columbia disasters. Its name was chosen partly to honour the spirit of exploration, and it now sits on display at the Smithsonian in Virginia.

Where three borders meet in water

Iguazu Falls sits on the Iguazu River, which forms part of the boundary between Brazil and Argentina, with Paraguay nearby at the point where the river meets the Parana. The falls are actually a system of hundreds of individual cascades spread over roughly 2.7 kilometres, far wider than Niagara. Both Brazil and Argentina have national parks protecting the surrounding subtropical forest, and each side offers a different perspective on the water.

A river that crosses a continent

The Niger is one of Africa's great rivers, running roughly 4,200 kilometres through West Africa before emptying into the Gulf of Guinea. Despite its name, it does not pass through the country of Niger for most of its length - that country is named after the river, not the other way around. Its unusual boomerang shape puzzled European geographers for centuries, since it flows away from the coast before turning back toward the sea.

From page to screen

Alice Walker published The Color Purple in 1982, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year, making her the first African American woman to receive that award for fiction. The novel is told largely through letters and spans decades in the life of its central character, Celie, in rural Georgia. It was adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1985 and later into a Broadway musical.