Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A symbol that honours an old name

Mercury's chemical symbol, Hg, comes from the Latin word hydrargyrum, meaning "water silver" - a nod to the element's liquid, silvery appearance at room temperature. It is the only metal that stays liquid under ordinary conditions, which is why it was long used in thermometers and barometers. That same mobility made it notoriously difficult to handle safely, and its toxicity is now well recognised.

An epic shaped by oral tradition

The Iliad is attributed to Homer, but it grew out of a long tradition of oral poetry performed by travelling bards rather than being composed at a desk. The poem covers only a few weeks of the Trojan War, focusing on the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, and it was likely recited aloud for generations before being written down. Its companion piece, the Odyssey, follows a very different kind of journey home.

A book that still speaks to readers

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, is set in a small Alabama town and told through the eyes of a young girl, Scout Finch. Her father, Atticus, defends a Black man falsely accused of a crime - a storyline rooted in the racial injustice of the American South. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize and remains a staple of school reading lists.

The astronomer who moved the Earth

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer who proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, sat at the centre of the universe. His idea, published in the sixteenth century, challenged the accepted model of his time and helped set the stage for later figures such as Galileo and Kepler. He was also a canon in the Catholic Church and worked across mathematics, medicine and economics.

Mongolia's capital on the steppe

Ulaanbaatar is the capital of Mongolia and home to roughly half the country's population, making it one of the most dominant single-city concentrations in the world. Sitting on the Tuul River and surrounded by vast grassland, it is the cultural and economic heart of a nation known for its nomadic heritage.