Olbers' paradox asks why the night sky is dark if the universe holds an infinite number of stars. In a static, infinite universe, every line of sight would eventually end on a star's surface, so the sky should blaze with light. The darkness we see is evidence against that picture. The Big Bang model explains it: the universe expands, stretching light from distant sources so far that it shifts from visible wavelengths into microwaves. Those microwaves are the cosmic background radiation, which appears dark to the eye.

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.