Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A language with two homes in southern Africa

Afrikaans is one of South Africa's eleven official languages, and it is also widely spoken in neighbouring Namibia, where it serves as a recognised lingua franca despite English being the sole official language. The language grew out of seventeenth-century Dutch settlement at the Cape and absorbed influences from Malay, Portuguese, Khoisan languages and later English. It is also the youngest of South Africa's official languages to have developed locally.

A game older than chess itself

Chaturanga, which appears in this quiz, is the ancient Indian predecessor of chess. Played on an eight-by-eight board, it is generally dated to around the sixth century and featured pieces representing infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots. Traders and travellers carried it westward, where it evolved into the Persian game shatranj and eventually into modern chess. Mahjong, by contrast, is a tile-based game that developed in nineteenth-century China.

The long race to the bottom of the world

Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition reached the South Pole in December 1911, beating Robert Falcon Scott's British team by roughly a month. Amundsen had originally planned to head for the North Pole, but changed course after rival claims emerged. He kept his new destination secret even from his own crew until the ship was well underway. Scott's party reached the pole later and perished on the return journey.

When a bodybuilder took over Sacramento

Arnold Schwarzenegger won the California recall election of 2003, replacing Governor Gray Davis, and served two terms until 2011. Born in Austria, he had already built careers in competitive bodybuilding and Hollywood before entering politics. His election drew enormous international attention, partly because the recall ballot also featured a long list of unusual candidates.