Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A proclamation that changed the course of a war

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by Abraham Lincoln on 1 January 1863, declared enslaved people in Confederate-held territory to be free. It did not end slavery everywhere at once - border states loyal to the Union were exempt - but it reframed the Civil War as a fight against slavery and opened the door to Black soldiers joining the Union Army. Slavery was finally abolished across the United States by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

Chekhov's quiet revolution on stage

Anton Chekhov wrote The Seagull in the 1890s, and its first performance in St Petersburg in 1896 was a disaster. The play was saved two years later when Konstantin Stanislavski staged it at the Moscow Art Theatre, using a naturalistic style that suited Chekhov's understated drama. That production turned The Seagull into an emblem of the theatre - the Moscow Art Theatre adopted a seagull as its emblem.

The Queen of the Night and Mozart's final flourish

The Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute is one of opera's most demanding roles, famous for the aria "Der Hölle Rache", which calls for a soprano to hit a series of high F6 notes. Mozart wrote the opera in 1791, the last year of his life, blending fairy-tale spectacle with Masonic symbolism. It premiered in Vienna just two months before his death.

An American songwriter in the Nobel pantheon

When Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, it was the first time the award went to a songwriter. The Swedish Academy cited his creation of "new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". Dylan was slow to acknowledge the honour, and he did not attend the ceremony, though he later submitted a speech and performed in Stockholm the following year.

The desert that is more than sand

The Sahara is the largest hot desert on Earth, stretching across much of North Africa. It is often confused with Antarctica, which is technically the largest desert of all because deserts are defined by low precipitation rather than heat or sand. The Sahara itself is far from uniform: it contains rocky plateaus, gravel plains, mountains and only a fraction of wind-blown dunes.