In May 1945 microbiologist Theodor Rosebury, working on biological weapons at Detrick Field in Maryland, woke with nausea and fever after a dinner of lobster. He was treated with sulfadiazine and the newly developed penicillin, and his fever fell to normal, which he thought was an early sign of penicillin working against psittacosis. His experiments then showed how the bacteria escaped through a hole in the glass just wide enough for a hair and entered the air, with stroboscopic photographs showing droplets bouncing from his palm. The episode shaped how wartime scientists thought about airborne infection, and afterwards Rosebury campaigned against biological weapons.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.