ESO 580-49 looks like a calm spiral galaxy, about 185 million light-years from Earth. In October 2011, however, a gamma-ray burst, a short and extremely energetic flash of gamma rays, was detected from the part of the sky where the galaxy sits. Astronomers estimate that a chance alignment of this kind would be roughly one in ten million, so the galaxy is very likely the burst's host. At this distance it ranks as the second-closest gamma-ray burst ever recorded. Known causes of such bursts, such as the collapse of massive stars or the merger of compact objects, do not seem to fit the evidence well. The researchers have therefore suggested that the event may belong to a new, not yet characterised class of explosion.

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.