Pedestrian crossings marked with Belisha beacons had been used in Britain since the 1930s, but as car traffic grew, drivers and walkers increasingly ignored them. From 1949 to 1951 the Ministry of Transport tested designs meant to be more visible, and the familiar black and white stripes emerged from that work. The new design was trialled at 1,000 experimental sites across the UK. The first zebra crossing opened on Slough High Street on 31 October 1951. The stripes are credited to the physicist and traffic engineer George Charlesworth, first head of the traffic section at the Road Research Laboratory. The name is thought to come from a 1948 remark by the MP James Callaghan, who said a black and white prototype looked like a zebra.

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.