A human starts as a single cell and reaches the first breath in roughly nine months of steps
the gist
A pregnancy begins when a sperm releases its 23 chromosomes into the egg, and the egg then forms a hard capsule that blocks any other sperm. The fertilised cell is nudged down the fallopian tube while copying its DNA. By about week three the embryo is a flat disc with two fluid-filled sacs, one of which becomes the yolk sac that makes the first blood cells. By week four a heart tube is beating and the nerve tube is forming in the head. Around week five the embryo has a tail, which later shrinks away, while the sexes begin to differentiate in the third month. By the sixth month a baby can be born early, though survival is low at that stage. At full term the lungs must be ready for air, which is why birth is the start of breathing.
so what
Understanding these stages explains why early pregnancy is so vulnerable and why premature birth carries such risk. It also shows how much of the body is built in the first weeks, before most people know they are pregnant.
fun fact
The coccyx at the base of the spine is what remains of the tail that the human embryo develops early on.
Wellcome Collection · CC BY 4.0
Illustrative photo · Zephyris, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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.
how it works
To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.
so what
A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.
the bigger pattern
Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.
fun fact
In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.
more on this
background
A Corner in Wheat is a 1909 American short silent film which tells of a greedy tycoon who tries to corner the market in wheat, destroying the lives of the people who can no longer afford to buy bread. It was directed by D. W. Griffith and adapted by Griffith and Frank E. Woods from a novel and a short story by Frank Norris, titled The Pit and "A Deal in Wheat". Griffith may have had a real-life inspiration: six months earlier, James A. Patten had actually cornered the market in wheat, and in some cities, the price of bread doubled from five cents to ten, just as in the movie.
In 1994, A Corner in Wheat was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
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