The earliest fireworks came from China during the Song dynasty (960 to 1279). Centuries earlier, people had thrown bamboo stems into fires to make loud bangs, and later gunpowder packed into paper tubes was used to imitate that sound. Song craftspeople made the first firecrackers from rolled paper tubes with a fuse, strung them into long chains called bian, and sold them in markets. Rocket-propelled fireworks appeared by the 1200s, and Chinese chemists developed colored flames by adding metal compounds to the powder. European makers picked up the craft by the 14th century, and the range of colors expanded in the late 1700s, when chemists found that different metal salts give off specific colors.

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.