During the First World War, the American artist Anna Coleman Ladd ran the Studio for Portrait Masks in Paris, which made lightweight, detailed copper masks for soldiers whose faces had been badly destroyed in battle. A 1918 silent film documents the workshop, along with the work of the British sculptor Francis Derwent Wood, who pioneered metal masks at a London hospital. Rubber masks were then common but less durable, and the film captures a moment when medical advances collided with the new injuries of trench warfare. Machine guns and trench conditions caused severe facial wounds on a scale few armies had seen before. The film is held by the National Library of 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.