Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A garment that marked Roman status

The palla was a draped outer garment worn by Roman women, typically wrapped over a tunic and sometimes pinned at the shoulder. Its length and fabric signalled the wearer's wealth and social standing, much like the toga did for men. Both garments were more than clothing: they were visual shorthand for who belonged where in Roman society.

The Tigris and the cradle of civilisation

The Tigris rises in the mountains of eastern Turkey before flowing through Iraq and joining the Euphrates on its way to the Persian Gulf. Together, the two rivers watered Mesopotamia, the region often called the cradle of civilisation, where some of the earliest cities and writing systems emerged. The river's name survives in Arabic as the Dijlah, and it remains a vital water source for the region today.

From Pygmalion to My Fair Lady

George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, first performed in 1913, tells the story of a phonetics professor who bets he can pass a Cockney flower seller off as a duchess. Shaw took the title from the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with his own creation. The play became the musical My Fair Lady in 1956, and its songs - and the question of what happens to Eliza Doolittle after the curtain falls - have kept audiences arguing ever since.

The cerebellum: small but essential

The cerebellum sits at the back of the brain, beneath the much larger cerebrum, and despite its modest size it contains a huge share of the brain's neurons. It fine-tunes movement, posture and balance, which is why damage to it causes unsteady walking and coordination problems rather than memory loss. The brain stem, by contrast, handles automatic functions like breathing and heart rate.

Molybdenum: a metal you rarely notice

Molybdenum takes its symbol Mo from its name, while Mg and Mn belong to magnesium and manganese respectively - a trio of symbols that trip up many chemistry students. The element is a silvery metal used to strengthen steel, and it also appears in tiny amounts in living things, including some enzymes in the human body. It was isolated in the late eighteenth century, though its ores had puzzled chemists for years before that.