In August 2012 archaeologists in Leicester, England, began searching the site of the former Greyfriars Friary for the remains of Richard III. The king had been killed in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field, and his grave was lost after the friary was dissolved in 1538 and demolished. The search was started by Philippa Langley and the Looking for Richard project, with support from the Richard III Society, and was run by University of Leicester Archaeological Services with Leicester City Council. On the first day a skeleton of a man in his thirties was found with severe injuries and a marked curvature of the spine. Analysis suggested he had been killed by a halberd blow to the skull or a sword thrust through the brain, with other wounds inflicted after death. Mitochondrial DNA matched two descendants of Richard's sister Anne of York, and on 4 February 2013 the university concluded beyond reasonable doubt that it was Richard III. The remains were reinterred at Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015 in a televised service.

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.