Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A flag that refuses to be a rectangle

Nepal's flag is the only national flag that is not a quadrilateral. It consists of two stacked triangular shapes, a design that echoes the country's Himalayan peaks and carries symbolic meaning tied to Hinduism and Buddhism. Unlike most flags, which are mass-produced in standard rectangular proportions, Nepal's must be cut and sewn to a precise geometric specification.

Orwell's bleak vision of surveillance

George Orwell's 1984 introduced readers to Winston Smith and his lover Julia, two people struggling to preserve private thought under a regime that monitors everything. The novel gave English the terms "Big Brother" and "doublethink," and its portrait of a state that rewrites history remains one of the most cited works of political fiction. It has never been out of print since its publication in 1949.

The elephant that dwarfs all other land animals

The African elephant is the largest living land animal, with mature bulls sometimes exceeding six tonnes. Its trunk contains tens of thousands of muscle units and is used for breathing, smelling, grasping and trumpeting. Elephants also communicate through low-frequency rumbles, some of which travel for kilometres through the ground.

The wall that divided a city and then fell

The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 to seal off East Berlin from West Berlin, becoming the most visible symbol of the Cold War division of Europe. On 9 November 1989, after weeks of mounting protests, crowds overwhelmed the border crossings and the wall was opened. German reunification followed less than a year later, in October 1990.

Mark Twain and the boy from the Mississippi

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in 1876, drew on Mark Twain's own childhood in Hannibal, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River. Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, worked as a riverboat pilot before turning to writing. Tom Sawyer later reappeared in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a novel often called the first great American novel.