Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A painting made from memory

Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889 while staying at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he had admitted himself after a mental breakdown. He worked from memory and imagination rather than the scene itself, though the view from his barred bedroom window did include a pre-dawn sky. The swirling sky and the village below have since become one of the most reproduced images in Western art.

A novel that caused a scandal

Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary was first serialised in 1856 and later put on trial in France for offending public morals. The story follows Emma Bovary, a country doctor's wife whose romantic fantasies collide with the dull reality of provincial life. Flaubert was acquitted, and the novel went on to shape the realist tradition in European fiction.

The world's heaviest snake

The green anaconda, native to the swamps and rivers of South America, is generally considered the heaviest snake species, with large females capable of reaching well over 100 kilograms. The reticulated python of Southeast Asia is typically longer, and the two species are often compared in debates about which deserves the title of largest. Anacondas are constrictors and spend much of their time in water.

Picasso's response to a bombing

Pablo Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 after the Basque town of Guernica was bombed during the Spanish Civil War. The huge canvas, shown at the Paris International Exposition that same year, uses monochrome tones and distorted figures to convey the horror of the attack. It became one of the most powerful anti-war statements in modern art.

Why lead is Pb

The chemical symbol for lead, Pb, comes from the Latin word plumbum, which also gives us the English word "plumbing". The element has been used since antiquity in pipes, pigments and glazes, though its toxicity is now well understood. Its symbol is a reminder that many chemical abbreviations trace back to Latin rather than to modern names.