Boomerang-like throwing weapons are very old: the oldest known European example, carved from mammoth tusk, was found in a Polish cave and is about 40,000 years old. Rock art of boomerangs thrown at kangaroos in the Kimberley region of Australia may be up to 50,000 years old. Many Aboriginal communities used non-returning throwing sticks, sometimes called kylies, to hunt animals up to about 100 metres away. The returning boomerang was not known across much of Australia, including Tasmania and most of the Northern Territory. Its curving path was probably first noticed by hunters trying to straighten their throwing sticks, and it may have been used to scare flocks of birds into nets.

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.