Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

Two rivers that shaped human history

The Nile and the Euphrates both appear in this quiz, and both are deeply tied to the rise of early civilisations. The Nile flows northward through northeastern Africa and empties into the Mediterranean, and its annual floods made agriculture possible in ancient Egypt. The Euphrates runs through Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and together with the Tigris it defined Mesopotamia, often called the cradle of civilisation. Few rivers have left such a mark on how societies developed.

A capital that has changed names more than once

Beijing is the capital of China today, but it has not always carried that name. Over the centuries the city was also known as Beiping and, at other times, as Peking, the spelling still used in many older English texts. The shift to "Beijing" reflects the pinyin romanisation system, which became the international standard for writing Chinese place names in Latin letters. So the difference between Peking and Beijing is largely a matter of transliteration, not location.

Fonts are everywhere, even when you do not notice them

Calibri, Arial and Courier are all typefaces, and each has a distinct personality and history. Courier was designed as a monospaced typewriter font, which is why every character takes up the same width. Arial is a clean sans-serif that became a default on many computers, while Calibri served as the default font in several versions of Microsoft Office. Typography shapes how we read, even when we are barely aware of it.

The iris: a small part with a big job

The iris is the coloured ring around the pupil in the eye, and it is not just decorative. Its muscles control the size of the pupil, widening it in dim light and narrowing it in bright conditions, which helps regulate how much light reaches the retina. Iris patterns are also highly individual, which is why iris recognition is used as a form of biometric identification. A tiny structure, but a remarkably useful one.