Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

The console that changed the living room

Sony's PlayStation arrived in Japan in December 1994, and its CD-based format helped push game design toward cinematic storytelling and 3D worlds. It grew out of a failed partnership with Nintendo, which had originally planned a CD add-on for the Super Nintendo. What began as a side project became one of the best-selling consoles ever made.

Why eggs are a nutritionally odd food

Eggs contain fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D and E, along with B vitamins, but essentially no vitamin C. That is not a flaw in the egg so much as a fact about where vitamin C comes from: plants synthesise it, while most animals - humans included - must obtain it from food. Sailors on long voyages learned this the hard way, which is why citrus fruit became standard ship's stores.

Jules Verne and the journey that outran its own technology

Around the World in 80 Days was published in 1872, when steamships, railways and the Suez Canal were shrinking travel times. Verne's fictional wager depended on tight timetables and new infrastructure, so the novel doubled as a tour of Victorian transport. It proved so popular that real reporters later raced to beat Phileas Fogg's fictional schedule.

A metal that flows at room temperature

Mercury is the only metal that is liquid under ordinary conditions, which is why it was long used in thermometers and barometers. It is also toxic, and its vapours are dangerous, so handling has been heavily restricted in many countries. That combination of usefulness and hazard has made mercury one of chemistry's most famous cautionary tales.