Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

An island capital with a divided history

Nicosia sits near the centre of Cyprus, which makes it unusual among Mediterranean capitals - most of them hug the coast. It is also the last divided capital in Europe: since 1974 a buffer zone has separated the Greek Cypriot south from the Turkish Cypriot north, and the city's main shopping street, Ledra Street, was for decades cut in two by a barricade. Crossing points have since reopened, but the Green Line still runs through the old town.

The world's highest mountain range

The Himalayas stretch across five countries, but Nepal is the one most often named first - it contains eight of the world's ten highest peaks, including Everest. The range was pushed up by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, a process that is still ongoing, which is why the mountains grow a few millimetres taller each year. "Himalaya" comes from Sanskrit, roughly meaning "abode of snow".

Why Turkey's capital is not its most famous city

Istanbul is Turkey's largest city and its economic heart, yet Ankara has been the capital since 1923, when the Republic of Turkey was founded. The choice was deliberate: Ankara sits in the Anatolian interior, safe from seaborne attack, and it became the base of the independence movement. Istanbul, by contrast, had served as the capital of both the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, which made it politically loaded in the new republic's eyes.

A planet that shrank

Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System, but it has not always been that small. Observations by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft showed that the planet has contracted over billions of years as its iron core cooled, wrinkling the crust into long cliffs called lobate scarps. It is also the closest planet to the Sun, completing an orbit in just 88 Earth days - yet a single day on Mercury lasts longer than its year.

From Hispania to Spain

The Romans called the Iberian Peninsula Hispania, and the name stuck in various forms for well over a thousand years. The region was divided into provinces and produced emperors including Trajan and Hadrian, both born in Hispania. The modern word "Spain" descends from the same root, which is why Spanish is still sometimes called the language of Cervantes rather than of Hispania.