Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A continent named after a mapmaker's pen

Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian navigator and merchant who sailed to the New World around the turn of the sixteenth century. While Christopher Columbus remained convinced he had reached Asia, Vespucci argued that these lands were a separate continent. German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, who produced a famous world map in 1507, labelled the southern landmass "America" in his honour - and the name stuck for both continents.

The smallest planet and its shrinking neighbour

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and the smallest in the Solar System, with a diameter of roughly 4,880 kilometres - not much wider than the continental United States. It has almost no atmosphere, so temperatures swing from scorching days to freezing nights. Its neighbour Venus is often called Earth's twin because the two are similar in size, yet Venus traps heat so effectively that it is the hottest planet of all.

Leonardo's doomed masterpiece

Leonardo da Vinci painted "The Last Supper" on a wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, completing it near the end of the fifteenth century. Instead of traditional fresco technique, he experimented with a dry wall preparation so he could work slowly and revise as he went. The experiment failed: the paint began flaking within his own lifetime, and centuries of damage, war and clumsy restorations have left only a fraction of the original surface intact.

Three names for one flag

The British flag is popularly known as the Union Jack, though strictly speaking "Union Flag" is the more formal term. It combines the crosses of St George, St Andrew and St Patrick, representing England, Scotland and Ireland. The nickname "Old Glory" belongs to the flag of the United States, while "John Bull" is a personification of England itself - a stout, plain-spoken character who has appeared in cartoons and satire since the eighteenth century.

Baltic capitals and the Nobel spotlight

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and Riga is the capital of Latvia - two of the three Baltic states, with Tallinn completing the trio as the capital of Estonia. Further east in the quiz, Professor Abdus Salam became the first Pakistani to win a Nobel Prize, sharing the 1979 Physics award for his work on the electroweak theory, which unified two fundamental forces of nature.