Jumbo was an African elephant captured in Sudan, who spent years at the London Zoo before being sold to the American showman P. T. Barnum in 1882, causing public outrage in Britain. In September 1885, after a final performance in St. Thomas, Ontario, he was being led to a railway boxcar when an unscheduled freight train struck him. The locomotive derailed and the elephant died about fifteen minutes later. Barnum turned his body into a publicity event, displaying his skeleton and stuffing his hide, which later became a school mascot at Tufts University. Jumbo's name entered everyday language as a word for anything enormous. The collision became one of the most famous animal deaths of the nineteenth century.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.