Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

The city that rose from the ashes

Beirut has been inhabited for thousands of years, and its name is thought to derive from the Canaanite word for "wells", a reference to the groundwater that once sustained the settlement. The city has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, earning it a reputation for resilience. Today it remains Lebanon's largest city and its cultural and economic centre.

The poet behind the epics

The Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed to Homer, a figure so shrouded in mystery that scholars still debate whether he was a single person or several poets whose work was later combined. The two epics were composed in an oral tradition, likely sung or recited by travelling bards before being written down. They went on to shape Western literature for nearly three thousand years.

A river that crosses a continent

The Amazon carries more water than any other river on Earth, discharging roughly a fifth of all fresh water that flows into the world's oceans. It begins in the Peruvian Andes and travels across South America before emptying into the Atlantic. Its basin covers several countries, though the largest portion of the river runs through Brazil.

The lightest element in the universe

Hydrogen sits at the top of the periodic table with atomic number 1, meaning its nucleus contains a single proton. It is the most abundant element in the cosmos and fuels the stars through nuclear fusion. On Earth it rarely exists on its own, instead binding with oxygen to form water or with carbon in countless compounds.

A war that reshaped the world

World War II ended in 1945, after six years of conflict that touched nearly every continent. The war in Europe concluded in May with Germany's surrender, while fighting in the Pacific continued until Japan's surrender in September. The aftermath saw the founding of the United Nations and the beginning of a new global order.