The Ellora Caves are a rock-cut complex in Maharashtra, India, with more than 100 caves carved from basalt cliffs, of which 34 are open to the public. They include Hindu, Buddhist and Jain caves built close together, a sign of religious coexistence in ancient India. The most famous is Cave 16, the Kailash temple, a monument dedicated to Shiva that was cut downward from the top of the cliff rather than built up from the ground. Its carvings include deities and relief panels summarising the two major Hindu epics. The complex was built largely between about the 7th and 10th centuries under the Rashtrakuta dynasty, with later Jain caves added under the Yadavas. Traders and pilgrims funded it, and the site lay on an ancient trade route.

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.