Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A zodiac with a built-in calendar

The Chinese zodiac assigns an animal to each year in a twelve-year cycle, and the animals are fixed: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. The lizard simply does not belong to the system. The cycle is closely tied to the lunar calendar, which is why Chinese New Year falls on a different date each year, usually between late January and mid-February.

Barcelona's big year

The 1992 Summer Olympics turned Barcelona into a showcase of urban renewal, with new beaches, ring roads and an upgraded port built for the occasion. The Games also marked a sporting milestone: the American basketball "Dream Team", led by Michael Jordan and other NBA stars, dominated the tournament and helped globalise the sport.

A house, a pitchfork and a pair of faces

Grant Wood painted "American Gothic" in 1930, depicting a farmer holding a pitchfork beside a woman in front of a modest white house. The house really exists, in Eldon, Iowa, and its distinctive upper window inspired the painting's title. Wood used his sister and his dentist as models, and the work has since become one of the most parodied images in American art.

Take That, and a solo career that followed

Robbie Williams joined Take That as a teenager in the early 1990s, when the group became one of the biggest pop acts in Britain. He left in 1995 and went on to a hugely successful solo career, with hits such as "Angels" and "Feel". His departure was one of the most talked-about pop splits of the decade.

Goethe's restless scholar

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published the first part of Faust in 1808, after working on it for decades. The play follows a scholar who, dissatisfied with conventional knowledge, makes a wager with the devil Mephistopheles. Goethe finished the second part shortly before his death in 1832, and the work is often considered the greatest achievement of German literature.