The Great Fire of London started in a bakery on Pudding Lane shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 September 1666. Firefighting relied on pulling down buildings to create firebreaks, but the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, hesitated to order it, and by the time demolitions began the wind had turned the blaze into a firestorm. The fire moved through the heart of the City on Monday and spread across nearly the whole city on Tuesday, destroying Old St Paul's Cathedral and threatening Whitehall Palace. Rumours of foreign arsonists led to violence against French and Dutch immigrants. The fire was finally halted when the wind dropped and the Tower of London garrison used gunpowder to blast firebreaks. The fire ended on Wednesday 5 September.

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.