On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven crew members. The cause was the failure of O-ring seals in a joint of the right solid rocket booster, which had stiffened in record-low temperatures that morning. Hot gas burned through the joint and into the external fuel tank, and the stack was torn apart by aerodynamic forces. The crew compartment fell into the Atlantic at about 207 mph and was recovered from the ocean floor during a three-month search. The disaster was watched live in many American schools because schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe was on board. The Rogers Commission later found that NASA managers had ignored known flaws and engineers' cold-weather warnings.

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.