Car airbags can injure or kill small children when they deploy with full force, so modern cars use sensors to adjust or suppress them. The sensing technology traces back to a chair developed at the MIT Media Lab for a Penn and Teller magic show. The chair used sensors to detect the presence and position of people, a problem that turned out to match the airbag challenge. Developers adapted the idea to decide when an airbag should fire and how hard. The story is a classic example of serendipity, where a technology built for entertainment solved a serious safety problem.

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.