In July 1946 French designer Louis Réard launched a two-piece swimsuit in Paris and called it the bikini, four days after the United States tested a nuclear bomb at Bikini Atoll. He hired a nude dancer, Micheline Bernardini, to model it because no fashion model would. A rival, Jacques Heim, had already launched a two-piece called the atome, but Réard's name and publicity stuck. Two-piece suits had existed in the ancient world, with depictions of women athletes in bikini-like garments in Roman mosaics from Sicily.

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.