On 16 October 1846, in the operating theatre of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, a patient was given ether and had a tumour removed on his neck without feeling pain. Dentist William T. G. Morton had used ether on a patient a month earlier, and the surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow arranged the public demonstration. The operation succeeded, and the theatre became known as the Ether Dome. The news spread quickly: in December 1846 Robert Liston, a Scottish surgeon, used ether for an amputation in Britain. This daguerreotype, made around 1850, shows a re-enactment of the event, with the surgeons posed around the operating table. Before anaesthesia, surgery had to be done while patients were conscious, so this demonstration was a turning point for medicine.

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.