Henry Darger was a Chicago janitor and hospital worker who wrote and painted in secret for decades. His main work, In the Realms of the Unreal, runs to 15,145 pages and follows child rebels fighting for freedom on a fictional planet. Some of his watercolour paintings are over 10 feet long, built from figures traced from magazines and children's books. Nobody knew about the work until his landlords found it when he moved into a nursing home in 1972, shortly before his death. He is now a central figure of outsider art, with major collections in New York and Chicago.

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.