Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

The lion's shrinking kingdom

Lions once ranged far beyond Africa, from Greece and the Balkans to the Middle East and northern India. Today, the only wild population outside sub-Saharan Africa survives in and around India's Gir Forest, where Asiatic lions are a distinct and endangered subspecies. The Arabian Peninsula, once home to the Asiatic lion, no longer has any wild lions at all.

A peninsula nation facing the Atlantic

Portugal occupies most of the Iberian Peninsula, which it shares with Spain, and its long coastline faces the Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean. That geography shaped its history: during the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese navigators such as Vasco da Gama opened sea routes to India and Brazil, building one of the first truly global maritime empires.

From a West End stage to worldwide fame

Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera premiered in London in 1986 and went on to become one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history. It is based on a French novel by Gaston Leroux, published in 1910, which drew on real rumours about a ghost haunting the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris.

The many faces of the Bloody Mary

The Bloody Mary is usually made with vodka, but that was not always the case. The drink is often traced to the 1920s and 1930s, when bartenders experimented with gin and other spirits before vodka became the standard base. Its savoury mix of tomato juice, spices and citrus has since inspired countless variations, from the Virgin Mary to spicier regional versions.

Fluorine: small symbol, big reactivity

Fluorine's chemical symbol is F, short for its Latin-derived name, and it sits at the top of the halogen group on the periodic table. It is the most reactive of all the elements, which is why it is never found free in nature but always locked into compounds. Its symbol is easily confused with Fe for iron and Fr for francium, a common trap in chemistry quizzes.