Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer who attacked women working as prostitutes in London's impoverished Whitechapel district in 1888. Victims had their throats cut and were then mutilated, and several had internal organs removed, which led many to think the killer had some anatomical or surgical knowledge. Police linked a series of eleven murders from 1888 to 1891, though only five, the canonical five, are generally considered most likely to be the same killer. Newspapers and letters, some of them hoaxes, fed public fear and gave the killer his enduring name. No one was ever charged, and the mystery remains one of the most studied cold cases in history.

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.