Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was first published in 1755 and took him almost nine years to complete, largely by himself. It contained a word list of 42,773 entries, and Johnson defined each word and illustrated its meanings with around 114,000 quotations from writers. Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden were cited most often, but Johnson also included sentences from the popular press of his day. The pages were about 46 centimetres tall, and Johnson called the book proud in its great bulk. This 1785 sixth edition, issued a year after his death, shows how the dictionary remained the standard reference for generations. It is still considered one of the most influential dictionaries in the history of English.

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.