Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A museum on a spiral

The Guggenheim in New York is as famous for its building as for its collection. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the white concrete spiral on Fifth Avenue, and it opened in 1959, six months after his death. Visitors ride an elevator to the top and walk down the ramp, so the art unfolds gradually. Its neighbours on Museum Mile include the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Neue Galerie, while the Musée d'Orsay and the Centre Pompidou are both in Paris.

Why 1917 still echoes

The Russian Revolution of 1917 unfolded in two stages: the February Revolution, which toppled the tsarist autocracy, and the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks seized power under Vladimir Lenin. Russia was still using the Julian calendar at the time, which is why the "October" revolution fell in November by today's Gregorian reckoning. The events led to the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922 and reshaped global politics for most of the twentieth century.

The quiet metal behind the symbol

Nickel takes its symbol Ni from the German Kupfernickel, a reddish ore miners blamed on a mischievous sprite because it yielded no copper. It is a hard, silvery metal used in stainless steel, rechargeable batteries and coins. Its neighbour on the periodic table, Ne, is neon, the gas that glows in advertising signs, and plain N stands for nitrogen, which makes up most of the air we breathe.

The sea between two continents

The Red Sea separates north-eastern Africa from the Arabian Peninsula and connects to the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal. It sits in a rift where the African and Arabian tectonic plates are pulling apart, which is why it is unusually deep and why its waters are among the warmest and saltiest in the world. Its name may come from blooms of reddish algae, though the exact origin is debated.

Wellington, the southern capital

Wellington became New Zealand's capital in 1865, replacing Auckland, partly because the growing settlement in the south needed a central seat of government. It sits at the southern tip of the North Island on Cook Strait, and it is regularly described as the windiest city in the world. Auckland remains the country's largest city, while Christchurch is the biggest on the South Island.