In April 1977, fourteen women began gathering in Buenos Aires' Plaza de Mayo to search for children who had been seized by Argentina's military government. Between 1976 and 1983, about 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared, meaning secretly kidnapped and never seen again, most of them young union, political and student activists. The junta labelled the women unstable and subversive, but international support and growing evidence turned public opinion. After democracy returned in 1983, the Mothers helped set up a national genetic data bank that has identified more than 120 grandchildren born in captivity, and their testimony helped convict dozens of officers of crimes against humanity.

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.