Antarctica, one of the most remote places on Earth, is now releasing mercury rather than just storing it. Mercury drifts through the air from coal plants and mines and settles on ice and ocean. A study of 16 seafloor sediment cores off the Antarctic Peninsula found mercury accumulation rising about 160 percent since industrialization, with faster increases from the 1950s. Melting glaciers are also freeing mercury trapped in the ice, which raised releases into the ocean by about 550 percent. Once in sediment, mercury can turn into methylmercury, a more toxic form that climbs the food web through krill and fish.

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.