Bismarck was the first of two Bismarck-class battleships built for Nazi Germany's navy. Laid down in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched in February 1939, she was commissioned in August 1940. Her only major operation, codenamed Rheinübung, took place in May 1941. Together with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, she aimed to break into the Atlantic and raid Allied shipping. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the British battlecruiser HMS Hood was destroyed by fire from Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, and Prince of Wales was forced to retreat. Bismarck was damaged, leading to a pursuit involving dozens of Royal Navy warships. A torpedo strike from Swordfish aircraft from HMS Ark Royal jammed her steering gear. In the final battle the next morning, British battleships and cruisers left her crippled, and her crew scuttled her. The wreck was located in 1989 by Robert Ballard.

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.