Text messaging grew from the 1984 idea of Friedhelm Hillebrand at Deutsche Telekom, who typed random sentences and counted characters, finding most messages fit under 160. That figure became the SMS limit, set within the GSM mobile standard. On 3 December 1992, engineer Neil Papworth sent the words Merry Christmas over the Vodafone network to a phone at a party in Newbury. Finland's Radiolinja launched commercial person-to-person SMS in 1994, and by 2007 text messaging was the most widely used mobile data service, with 2.4 billion active users.

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.