Everything You Know is Wrong Trivia Quiz

Answer: Strawberry

If that answer has annoyed you then you'll probably hate me by the end of the quiz. A strawberry is in fact an accessory fruit alongside the apple and the fig. Accessory fruits are those whose fleshy part is not derived from the ovary but from other tissues.

To be a true berry, a fruit's flesh must be derived from a single ovary and the seeds embedded within. Other examples of a true berry are the blackcurrant and the redcurrant.

Strictly speaking the flesh of the strawberry is not the fruit of the plant but the "seeds" on the outside of the flesh (known as the achenes) are. A single seed is found inside each achene.

Answer: Both

This one has caused a fair few arguments down the pub I can tell you. "It goes anti-clockwise north of the equator, clockwise to the south. I've seen it done" they say.

It's no more than a trick. The common belief is that the Coriolis effect defines the way that liquid goes down a plughole but I'm afraid that's not the case - the Coriolis force is far too weak at such a small level to have an effect. More important factors include; the direction that the water enters the basin, the shape of the basin and the movement of the water affected by removing the plug from the basin.

Answer: False

You can stop protesting now. They do not. Chameleons change colour according to their moods. They will change colour if they are frightened, proud or trying to attract a mate. They may also change as a result of a change in ambient temperature. Any camouflaging that occurs as a consequence is purely coincidental.

Answer: The Bank of England

Despite the cultural connections to Scotland, kilts, bagpipes and haggis were all invented elsewhere. Kilts are Irish (as in fact are the Scots in ancestral terms). Even the word kilt isn't Scottish - it's Danish.

The origin of haggis is not certain but it certainly isn't Scottish. It is mentioned in ancient Greek texts by Homer and Aristophanes and the 'Oxford Companion to Food' states that it is an ancient Roman dish.

Bagpipes are mentioned by Aristophanes in reference to the pipers of Thebes. They are also mentioned in the Bible in Daniel 3:10 as well as in other verses. Where exactly the bagpipe was invented is not known but the first recorded mention of one was found on a Hittite slab in modern-day Turkey.

The Bank of England was founded by Scot William Paterson in 1694 when he proposed a loan of £1.2 million to the English government in return for the ability to control the printing of bank notes and recognition as the Governor of the Bank of England.

Answer: Dogs

The bird, the canary, takes its name from the islands, rather than the islands from the birds. The island's name was coined by the Romans who named it the "Isle of Dogs" due to the very large number of canines that lived on the island.

Answer: Spain

It is frequently stated that the British invented the concentration camp, however, this is not the case. The British did give the camps their modern name, translating it from the name the Spanish gave to their camps "reconcentratión".

The Spanish set up the first camps as a means of concentrating and controlling the local population on Cuba during the Spanish-American war in 1895. The British built their first camps during the Boer War of 1899-1902 after their policy of burning Boer farmsteads left them with an enormous refugee problem. The purpose of the concentration camps was to round up the women and children and labourers to break the supply lines to the enemy. Unfortunately, the breaking of the food supply line to enemy combatants also led to a shortage of food for the detainees and approximately 50,000 died in the camps due to starvation and disease.

Answer: Thumbs up

The idea of the thumbs down being the gesture of death came from a nineteenth century painting, 'Pollice Verso', by Jean-Leon Gerome and has been reinforced subsequently by Hollywood movies. Pollice verso translates into English from the original Latin as 'turned thumb'. Gerome wrongly assumed that this meant turned down.

The thumb was in fact emblematic of the sword so the thumb up represented the drawn sword and was the Emperor's indication that the gladiator was to be killed. The thumb tucked into the fist was meant to represent the sword being placed back into its sheath and therefore was an indication that the gladiator was to be saved. The thumbs down gesture was not used by the Romans at all.

Answer: False

In his final moments, Nelson did say "Kiss me, Hardy" but the Victorians appear not to have been happy with that and suggested that he had in fact said "Kismet, Hardy", borrowing the Turkic word that roughly translates as "it is my fate". The only problem with this interpretation is that there is no record of the use of "kismet" in English until several decades after Nelson's death.

Even then, "Kiss me, Hardy" were almost certainly not Nelson's last words. His ship's surgeon recorded them as "Thank God I have done my duty" said repeatedly. But he had left the room before Nelson lost consciousness.

Three people remained in the room as he lay dying. A hot and thirsty Nelson was having his chest massaged by the ship's chaplain. He was drinking lemonade and being fanned by his steward in an attempt to keep him cool. Also in attendance was the ship's purser. All three recorded in their journals that as he slipped out of consciousness, Nelson uttered, "Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub" and died shortly afterwards. However Alexander Scott, the chaplain, recorded his final words as "God and my country."

Answer: Fruit fly

The Russian dog, Laika, was the first animal to be sent into orbit around the Earth in 1957. However, 11 years earlier the Americans sent several fruit flies, names unknown, into space in a V2 rocket to test the effects of radiation at high altitude.

The fruit fly, scientific name Drosophila melanogaster, is, like all members of the insecta class, a member of the phylum arthropoda of the kingdom animalia.

The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) defines outer space as beginning at 100km above sea level and although the fruit flies did not make orbit they did pass this threshold. The US defines space flight as any that passes the border between the mesosphere and the thermosphere at 80.5km above sea level.

Answer: Nothing at all

Though it is now commonly associated with the phrase "save our souls", the original SOS was established as a distress call by the German government without standing for anything at all.

It was created as a sequence of Morse Code (dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot) to be repeated continuously. It was chosen because it was easy to send out and easily recognised by the recipient. The letters S (dot-dot-dot in Morse Code) and O (dash-dash-dash) were combined into SOS as an aide-memoire as to how the distress call should be sent out.

Save Our Souls became popularly attached to the distress signal after its adoption as the international standard call in 1908.