Around the World in Ten Questions (15) Quiz

Answer: Madrid

Opened in 1928, Barajas Airport is located just six miles from the centre of Madrid, the Spanish capital. Also named for Spain's first President following the end of Franco's dictatorship in 1976, its full title is "Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport".

With an area of 7,500 acres, Barajas is the largest European airport by area. Passenger numbers exceeded 50 million for the first time in 2015, making it Europe's sixth-busiest airport that year. Spain's other major airport, Barcelona El Prat Airport, had 44 million passengers that year, putting it right behind Madrid, in seventh place.

Answer: Chicago IL

Three hundred guests filled the six-car train that made the first journey operated by the Chicago and South Side Rapid Transit Railroad on May 27, 1892, and the line opened to the public ten days later. The charge to early passengers on the 3.6-mile trip was five cents. Much of the route travelled by those early trains is still part of the South Side Elevated Railroad, the "Chicago L" today.

Unlike the cable railroads of the time, the new line ran 24-hours a day, with two trains operating through the late-night hours, providing service every 20 minutes. During rush hours, 18 cars operated with a three-minute gap between them.

Answer: Dnieper

The River Dnieper rises in in the Valdai Hills, in north-west central Russia between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. These same hills are also the source of other major rivers including the Volga, the Daugava, the Lovat and the Msta. From this starting point to the north of Smolensk, the Dnieper flows 1,333 miles in a generally southerly direction before emptying into the Black Sea. Within Europe, only the Volga, the Danube and the Ural are longer.

Answer: Cairo

Founded by Jawhar of the Fatimid dynasty in 969, the modern city of Cairo is already more than 1,000 years old but the land where it sits at the mouth of the River Nile was the site of numerous ancient capitals. Legend has it that it was named 'al-Qâhira' because at the time the city was founded Mars ("The Conquering Star") was rising.

Now one of the world's 20 largest metropolitan areas (and the largest in the Arab world), Islamic architecture dominates the skyline and Cairo is nicknamed "the City of a Thousand Minarets". A mix of the ancient and the modern, the city is also home to one of the world's busiest metro systems (opened in 1987), with more than one billion passengers annually. (Algiers is home to Africa's only other metro.) Founded as a madrasa in the 10th century, the Al-Azhar University is the world's second-oldest institution of higher learning.

Answer: Wave it

A Japanese person might, I suppose, sit on the 'Hinomaru', but to do so would be disrespectful, since it is the country's national flag. Embodying Japan's nickname as "Land of the Rising Sun", the flag is officially called 'Nisshôki' (meaning "sun-mark flag") but is commonly known as 'Hinomaru' ("circle of the sun").

A white rectangle with a central red disc, the design was adopted as by proclamation as the country's civil ensign in 1870. With only slight modification to the dimensions, it became the official national flag on August 13, 1999.

Answer: Canada

Part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc of western North America, the 8,790-foot Mount Meager is situated some 90 miles north of Vancouver in the Coast Mountains of southwestern British Columbia. Just four feet lower and about 40 miles south of Meager stands the potentially-active stratovolcano Mount Garibaldi. In the same range, some 15 miles west of the resort town of Whistler stands the 7,799-foot high Mount Cayley.

The "Big Daddy" of them all, though, is Mount Edziza, towering 9,120 feet above sea level and topped by an ice-filled caldera almost a mile wide. Surrounded by the Mount Edziza Provincial Park, which covers more than 550,000 acres, Mount Edziza has erupted at least 20 times in the last 10,000 years.

Answer: Lake Malawi (aka Lake Nyassa)

One of the nine African Great Lakes, Lake Malawi (called Lake Nyasa in Tanzania and Lago Niassa in Mozambique) is the southernmost of the lakes in the East African Rift system. With an area of 11,400 square miles, it is only slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland: it is the world's ninth-largest lake and Africa's third-largest.

Lake Malawi has an average depth of 958 feet, but in some places it is more than 2,300 feet deep. It is also a meromictic lake, meaning that its water levels do not mix, and it is for this reason that so many different species of fish can be found here.

Cichlids are one of the largest of all vertebrate families, with more than 1,600 species (and many more discovered every year). More than 700 different species of cichlids are known to live in Lake Malawi, although estimates are that there could easily be more than 1,000. The lake also contains numerous non-cichlid fish species as well as many species of mollusc, snail, shrimp and crab, many of them found nowhere else on Earth.

Answer: Tonga

A Polynesian sovereign state, the Kingdom of Tonga consists of 169 islands, 36 of which are inhabited. Although the total surface area of the kingdom is only 290 square miles (about the size of Singapore), it is spread over an area of 270,000 square miles, which is slightly larger than the U.S. state of Texas.

Tonga has a population of just over 103,000 (2011 Census), of whom 70% live on the largest island, Tongatapu. About a quarter of the national population live in the capital and largest city, Nukuʻalofa.

Previously known as The Friendly Isles (because of the warm reception given to Captain Cook when he arrived here in 1773), Tonga was a British protectorate from 1900 until 1970 but it has never actually relinquished its sovereignty to a foreign power.

Answer: Munster

The island of Ireland is divided into four provinces. Three of these are entirely within the Republic of Ireland, whereas Ulster consists of the six counties of Northern Ireland plus three within the Republic.

Although it comprises only six of the island's 32 counties, Munster, which occupies the south of the island, is the largest. With an area of 9,527 square miles, Munster is slightly larger than the U.S. state of New Hampshire.

Ulster, located at the northern end of the island, is the second-largest. Leinster, comprising the east-central region, contains 12 of the 32 counties but is only the third-largest, although with Dublin as its major city it is also the most populous. Connacht in the west-central is the smallest of the four provinces, about the size of Kuwait.

Answer: Botswana

Previously the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, the independent Republic of Botswana was established in 1966. This landlocked country is bordered to the south and southeast by South Africa, to the west and north by Namibia and to the northeast by Zimbabwe. It also has a poorly-defined border just a few hundred yards long with Zambia to the north.

With an area of 581,370 square miles, Kenya is the world's 48th-largest country. It is only marginally smaller than Ukraine, the largest country in Europe. With 70& of its land covered by the Kalahari Desert, Botswana has a tiny population by comparison to other countries of similar size -- just over 2.1 million (2014 estimate). More than ten percent of the entire population live in the capital and largest city, Gaborone. Western Sahara is the only less-densely populated African country, whilst around the world the only large countries with lower population densities are Mongolia and Greenland.