1. This is the current year in various calendars:

Assyrian - 6771 Hebrew - 5782 Chinese - 4720 Julian - 2775 Buddhist - 2563 Gregorian - 2022 Hindu - 1943 Islamic - 1443 Iranian - 1440 French Revolutionary - 230

2. Socrates never wrote anything. And even if he did, none of it survives. Everything we know about him and his philosophy comes from his pupils, especially Plato.

3. The oldest city in the world is Çatalhöyük in Turkey. It was founded before 7,000 B.C. and had a population of 10,000.

4. Ancient humans knew the world was round. Eratosthenes of Cyrene calculated its circumference within 2% of the real figure in the 3rd century B.C.

5. The broad eras of classical music are: -Medieval (500-1400) -Renaissance (1400-1600) -Baroque (1600-1750) -Classical (1750-1830) -Romantic (1830-1900) -Modern (1900-1950) -Contemporary (1950+)

6. Words like mother, fire, worm, we, this, and ashes date back at least 15,000 years. Not just words with the same meaning: words with the same meaning and sound.

If you could speak to an Ice Age human, they might understand these words.

7. WW1 and WW2 were not the first global conflicts. There were others before, such as the Seven Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, and the French Revolutionary Wars.

8. A symphony is a large musical composition for full orchestra divided into four sections.

9. The real reason for Ancient Rome's success and longevity wasn't its military might, but its political and legal system.

10. The oldest named individual in history was an Ancient Mesopotamian accountant called Kushim, who lived sometime between 3,400 and 3,000 B.C.

11. Ancient Greece wasn't a united country or kingdom. It was a collection of culturally-aligned city states with many differences who spent much of their time fighting one another.

12. There are 29 monarchies in the world, reigning over a combined 43 nations.

13. There is no statute forbidding murder in England.

14. Gothic architecture is defined by the pointed arch, which was brought back to the Europe after the Crusade, as opposed to the rounded arch of Classical architecture.

15. The word barbarian is really just ancient propaganda. The Greeks used it to describe non-Greek peoples, the word being an imitation of foreign languages which sounded like gibberish to them.

So "barbarians" weren't necessarily less civilised. They just weren't Greek.

16. Alexander the Great's conquests reached Ancient India, and afterwards a whole Indo-Greek culture appeared which involved a fusion between Hellenism and Buddhism.

This is a coin depicting Menander I, an Indo-Greek king, with both Greek and Kharosthi script.

17. The oldest board game in the world is known as the Royal Game of Ur, dating from around 2,400 B.C.

18. The oldest named poet in history was called Enheduanna. She lived in the 23rd century B.C. and was a priestess in the Ancient Mesopotamian City of Ur. She wrote a number of hymns which still survive.

19. In the Bible Jesus' Twelve Apostles were: -Simon (also known as Peter) -Andrew -James (son of Zebedee) -John -Philip -Bartholomew -Thomas -Matthew/Levi -James (son of Alphaeus) -Thaddaeus -Simon the Canaanite/Zealot -Judas Iscariot

20. Pakistan is an acronym for Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan.

21. There are 88 official constellations. 48 of them are regarded as "ancient", having been catalogued by the Babylonians, Greeks, and others.

22. 13th century university students were taught the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, astronomy, music, geometry).

23. The Mahābhārata is more than 1.8 million words long, which is ten times the length of the Iliad.

24. Greece actually missed out on the Renaissance, despite its ancestors being the ones who inspired it.

25. There are at least 170,000 words in the English language which are in use, of an estimated 1 million words altogether.

26. The Bronze Age Collapse in 1,200 B.C. was the downfall of several ancient civilisations in near-apocalyptic circumstances.

Over several decades there were volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, droughts, and the invasions of the mysterious "Sea Peoples."

27. Japan's monarchy is the oldest in the world, dating back to at least 539 A.D., and it has the only remaining head of state whose title is Emperor.

28. The Roman Kingdom was founded in 753 B.C., the Republic in 509 B.C., and the Empire in 27 B.C.

29. William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays: 17 comedies, 10 tragedies, and 10 histories. (Though there's disagreement about how to categorise some plays!)

30. A simple way to recognise Baroque music is by the harpsichord, a distinctive instrument of the era.

31. This scene from the film 300 is actually based on an anecdote from the Histories of Herodotus, written in the 5th century B.C., in which Persian messengers are thrown into a well (in Sparta) and the "pit of punishment" (in Athens).

32. These are the Five Orders of Columns in classical architecture: