On 9 November 1993, during the Croat–Bosniak War, the Old Bridge of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina collapsed into the Neretva river after several days of bombardment. Suleiman the Magnificent commissioned it in 1557, and it was designed by Mimar Hayruddin, a student of the great architect Sinan. A single stone arch carried it high over the river, joining the two halves of the city, which takes its name from the mostari, the bridge keepers who guarded it. For more than four centuries it was a symbol of the town and of the meeting of cultures in the Balkans. The bridge was rebuilt using original techniques and stone recovered from the river and reopened in 2004.

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.