Albert Einstein did fail his first entrance exam to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in 1895, at a younger age than most of his classmates. He scored very well in the maths and science sections, though, and passed on his second attempt. He later said he had never failed in mathematics and had mastered differential and integral calculus before fifteen. The confusion probably comes from grading systems: in Switzerland a 6 is the best grade, while in Germany a 6 is the worst. A low-looking mark on a German report would therefore have looked like a failure to someone reading it in the wrong system.

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.