Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

The line that divides the world

The 0th longitude circle runs through Greenwich, in south-east London, home of the Royal Observatory. In 1884 an international conference in Washington chose Greenwich as the world's prime meridian, largely because Britain's maritime charts were already in wide use. Longitude 0 is not just a cartographic convention: it fixes the reference point for every time zone on Earth, which is why Greenwich Mean Time became the world's baseline for keeping time.

Why the Winter Games began in an Alpine resort

The first Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix, France, in 1924, in the shadow of Mont Blanc. The event was initially staged as an "International Winter Sports Week" and only later recognised as the first Winter Olympic Games. Figure skating and ice hockey had already appeared at the Summer Games before that, but Chamonix brought snow and ice sports together in one dedicated winter festival.

Roman numerals, then and now

MMII may look cryptic, but the system is simply additive: M is 1,000, so two Ms make 2,000, and II adds two. The Romans did not use a zero or place value as we do, which is one reason arithmetic with Roman numerals is so awkward. Today they survive mainly for stylistic effect - on clock faces, film credits, monarchs' names and the occasional Super Bowl.

A play that has never gone out of fashion

Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare around 1600, follows a Danish prince wrestling with grief, doubt and revenge. It is among the most performed and most quoted plays in the English language, and its soliloquies have shaped how later writers think about inner conflict. The other options belong to different hands entirely: Oscar Wilde wrote The Importance of Being Earnest, while Waiting for Godot is by Samuel Beckett.