In 1936 the American geneticist H J Muller proposed that thousands of women could be artificially inseminated with sperm from exceptional men to pass on their gifts. In 1976 Robert K Graham, a 74-year-old optometrist, opened the Hermann J Muller Repository for Germinal Choice in California. The press called it the Nobel Prize sperm bank, though only three Nobel laureates contributed and none fathered a child. Donors were mostly mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists. The bank ran for almost 20 years and over 200 children were born. It collapsed in reputation when it emerged that the Nobel-winning transistor co-inventor William Shockley was a donor, and he had promoted racist ideas about intelligence. The story traces how eugenics ideas from Francis Galton onward shaped the dream of breeding genius.

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.