The Vedas, sacred Hindu scriptures, were composed orally for centuries before being written down.

The Ramayana, one of Hinduism's great epics, tells of Prince Rama's quest to rescue his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana.

The concept of karma — actions determining future circumstances — appears in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.

Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu deity, is the god of new beginnings, wisdom, and the remover of obstacles.

The oldest known musical instrument is a flute carved from a vulture bone, found in Germany and dated to 40,000 years ago.

Abstract art didn't begin with Picasso — Wassily Kandinsky is generally credited as the first to paint purely abstract works around 1910.

Philip Glass and Steve Reich pioneered minimalism — music based on repetitive patterns with gradual change.

The longest recorded rally in professional tennis lasted 643 shots in a match in 1984.

The British punk rock movement of the 1970s was partly an artistic and political reaction to economic decline.