Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

The city that earned a classical nickname

Edinburgh's title as the "Athens of the North" grew out of the Scottish Enlightenment, the 18th-century flowering of philosophy, science and literature that made the city a European intellectual centre. Its neoclassical architecture, particularly the unfinished Parthenon-style monument on Calton Hill, reinforced the comparison. Figures such as economist Adam Smith and philosopher David Hume gave the nickname real substance rather than mere flattery.

A planet where pressure crushes metal

Venus is often called Earth's twin because of its similar size, but its atmosphere could not be more hostile. Surface pressure there is roughly 90 times that of Earth at sea level, comparable to being almost a kilometre deep in our oceans. The Soviet Venera probes that landed in the 1970s and 1980s survived only around an hour before being destroyed.

Hardy's fictional Wessex

Thomas Hardy set The Mayor of Casterbridge, published in 1886, in a fictionalised version of Dorchester in southwest England, part of the "Wessex" he built across his novels. The story opens with a shocking act: a man sells his wife and daughter at a fair. Hardy drew on real Dorset places and customs, and the region now promotes a "Hardy country" trail for readers who want to walk through his landscapes.

The pandemic that circled a wartime world

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 to 1919 spread during the final year of the First World War, when troop movements helped carry the virus across continents. Despite the name, it did not originate in Spain; the country simply reported on it freely while wartime censors elsewhere kept quiet. Estimates suggest it infected around a third of the world's population.

A symbol shared across the zodiac

Leo, the fifth sign of the zodiac, takes its name from the Latin word for lion and is associated with the constellation of the same name. In astrology, it is traditionally linked to the element of fire and to the sun, which is said to rule it. The constellation itself contains Regulus, one of the brightest stars in the night sky.