The Salem witch trials of 1692 in colonial Massachusetts are often pictured with people burned at the stake, but that is a misconception. Of those accused, nineteen people convicted of witchcraft were executed by hanging. At least five others died in prison while awaiting trial or punishment. One man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death under heavy stones while trying to extract a confession from him. Corey refused to enter a plea, which in that legal system prevented a formal trial and kept his property from being forfeited. The imagery of burning comes largely from European witch persecutions, which the American episode is often confused with. The trials remain a major reference point in discussions of accusation, evidence and mass hysteria. Historians use the record to show how fear and social tension could override legal safeguards.

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.