Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A city with three names

Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul - the same city on the Bosphorus has carried all three names across its long history. It was founded by Greek settlers as Byzantium, renamed Constantinople when it became the capital of the Roman Empire under Constantine, and officially became Istanbul in the 20th century. The old name survives in "Byzantine", the word we still use for the empire that ruled from here for a thousand years.

The Games that paid for themselves

The 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles were a turning point for the modern Games. With existing venues and heavy corporate sponsorship, they turned a profit, something host cities today rarely manage. They were also boycotted by the Soviet Union and several allies, mirroring the Western-led boycott of Moscow four years earlier.

Hummus and the chickpea

Hummus takes its name from the Arabic word for chickpea, the ingredient that gives it its body and its mild, nutty flavour. The dish is claimed across the Levant, and versions vary from country to country. Chickpeas themselves are one of the oldest cultivated crops, grown in the Middle East for thousands of years.

Air travel before the telephone

The telephone arrived decades before the first powered flight. Alexander Graham Bell patented his device in 1876, while the Wright brothers did not take to the air until 1903. So for nearly thirty years, people could speak to each other across a wire long before anyone could fly.

The boy in blue

Thomas Gainsborough painted The Blue Boy around 1770, and it remains one of the best-known portraits in British art. The subject is widely believed to be Jonathan Buttall, the son of a wealthy merchant and a friend of the artist. Gainsborough reportedly painted it to prove he could rival the great portraitists of the past, using blue at a time when the colour was considered difficult in portraiture.