Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A debut that launched a career

Madonna's first single, "Everybody," arrived in 1982 and became a club hit in New York before she was a household name. It was a modest beginning for an artist who would go on to reshape pop music and image-making across the following decade. What is striking is how much of her later style, the dance focus and the confident persona, was already hinted at on that first release.

The shape that keeps builders honest

A pentagon has five sides, a fact that sounds trivial until you notice how often five-sided forms appear in architecture and design. The Pentagon in the United States takes its name directly from its five-sided footprint. Unlike a square or triangle, a regular pentagon cannot tile a flat surface on its own, which makes it an unusual and deliberate choice wherever it shows up.

Two very different cities named after people

O'Hare, one of the world's busiest airports, takes its name from Edward "Butch" O'Hare, a naval aviator. Charles de Gaulle, the Paris airport, honours the French general and president. Both are major international hubs, yet they carry the names of men from completely different worlds. Next time you see an airport code, it is worth asking whose name is hiding behind it.

The many faces of the baht

Thailand's currency, the baht, has a long history and its name has been used for various units of weight and money over the centuries. Today it is divided into smaller units called satang. The baht is also one of the more closely watched currencies in Southeast Asia because of Thailand's role as a regional trading and tourism hub.

A ballad that outlasted the era

"November Rain" by Guns N' Roses became one of the longest songs to reach the upper regions of the charts, running close to nine minutes. Its orchestral arrangement and epic music video made it a defining power ballad of the early 1990s. Few rock songs of that length have matched its staying power in radio and streaming playlists.