Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A pilot's tale that almost never left the ground

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince while living in exile in the United States during the Second World War, and the book was first published in 1943. Saint-Exupéry was himself an experienced aviator, and the narrator of the story is a pilot who crashes in the desert - an experience the author had survived himself in the Sahara in 1935. He never saw his most famous book become a global phenomenon: he disappeared on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean in 1944.

The element that took decades to name

Tennessine, symbol Ts, was added to the periodic table in 2016, making it one of the newest elements to be officially recognised. It is named after the state of Tennessee, home to Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Vanderbilt University, both of which contributed to the research. It belongs to the halogen group, yet it is a synthetic, highly radioactive element that exists only briefly in laboratories - a strange neighbour for fluorine and chlorine.

Why Venus spins the wrong way

Venus rotates on its axis in the opposite direction to nearly every other planet in the solar system, a phenomenon known as retrograde rotation. On Venus, the Sun would appear to rise in the west and set in the east, and a single day there lasts longer than its year. Scientists have proposed several explanations, including a massive collision early in its history or the slow effects of the planet's thick atmosphere, but no single theory is settled.

Canberra: the compromise capital

When Australia federated in 1901, Sydney and Melbourne - the two largest cities - both wanted to be capital. The compromise was to build an entirely new city, and Canberra was chosen as the site in 1908, with American architect Walter Burley Griffin winning the design competition. It remained a modest town for decades, and Parliament did not move there permanently until 1927.

The river that thunders

The Zambezi, which forms the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, is the fourth-longest river in Africa. Along that stretch it plunges over Victoria Falls, known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya, or "the smoke that thunders" - a curtain of water roughly twice the height of Niagara Falls. The river then flows east through Mozambique before emptying into the Indian Ocean.