Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A novel that shaped a French literary award

Robert Merle is far less known internationally than Ernest Hemingway, yet in France his 1962 novel L'Île holds a special place. It is an adventure story inspired by the mutiny on the Bounty, but it also explores moral questions about leadership, violence and colonial contact. The book won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, and remains a staple of French school reading lists.

Two writers, two very different seas

Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952 and played a major role in his receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature two years later. The novella follows an ageing Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream. Its simple, spare prose and themes of endurance and dignity made it one of the most widely read American works of the twentieth century.

The Sphinx and its missing nose

The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of Egypt's most recognisable monuments, carved from a single limestone ridge. It is generally dated to the reign of Pharaoh Khafre, around 2500 BCE. The nose has been missing for centuries, and popular stories blaming Napoleon's troops for shooting it off are contradicted by earlier drawings that already show the face without a nose.

Why the moon landing date matters

The first crewed landing on the Moon took place on 20 July 1969, when Apollo 11's lunar module touched down. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent about two and a half hours walking on the surface, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit. The date is often used as a marker for the peak of the Cold War space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

An island nation on the equator

São Tomé and Príncipe is a small African island country in the Gulf of Guinea. The equator passes through its territorial waters just south of São Tomé Island, making it one of the few countries crossed by this imaginary line. Its location gives the country a tropical climate and a history tied to Portuguese colonial sugar and cocoa plantations.