Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A symbol that seems to make no sense

Tin's chemical symbol, Sn, looks nothing like the English word, and that is because it comes from the Latin stannum. The same Latin root survives in the English word "stannous", still used in chemistry for compounds containing tin. Other elements share this quirk: iron is Fe from ferrum, and lead is Pb from plumbum, the source of the word "plumbing".

The deepest place on the planet

The Mariana Trench, in the western Pacific Ocean, contains the deepest known point on Earth's surface, the Challenger Deep. Estimates put its depth at roughly 10,900 metres, deep enough that Mount Everest could be dropped in with plenty of water to spare. Only a handful of people have ever descended there, and the pressure at the bottom is crushing.

Blake, the poet who printed his own books

William Blake published Songs of Innocence in 1789, and it was far from a conventional literary debut. He wrote, illustrated, engraved and printed the work himself using a relief etching method of his own invention, then hand-coloured each copy. His reputation grew slowly, and he is now seen as one of the defining figures of English Romanticism, alongside contemporaries such as Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Edison and the birth of recorded sound

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, and it was the achievement that first made him famous. Early machines recorded sound onto tinfoil cylinders, which were fragile and wore out quickly; wax cylinders and later flat discs soon replaced them. The phonograph turned music and speech into something that could be captured, kept and replayed, laying groundwork for the recording industry that followed.

Iceland's northernmost capital

Reykjavik is the capital of Iceland and the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state, sitting just over 64 degrees north. Despite the latitude, winters there are milder than many expect, thanks to the Gulf Stream. The city also runs largely on geothermal energy, which heats most homes and gives Iceland its famous volcanic landscape, complete with geysers and hot springs.