The Manhattan Project was a World War II research programme that produced the first nuclear weapons, led by the United States with the United Kingdom and Canada. At its peak it employed nearly 130,000 people and cost nearly 2 billion dollars at the time. From 1942 to 1946 it was directed by General Leslie Groves, while J. Robert Oppenheimer led the Los Alamos Laboratory where the bombs were designed. Enriched uranium was produced at Clinton in Tennessee, and plutonium was made in the world's first industrial-scale reactors at Hanford in Washington. Two designs were used in the war: Little Boy, a gun-type uranium bomb, and Fat Man, a plutonium implosion bomb. The first nuclear detonation was the Trinity test in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. Both bombs were then used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. After the war the project supported weapons testing, national laboratories and the foundations of the nuclear navy, before the Atomic Energy Commission took over in 1947.

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.