The French novelist Jules Verne’s adventure story ‘Around the world in 80 days’ may have been written in the author’s native language when it came out in 1872, but the novel went on to become one of the most acclaimed and well-read stories by the author. The book narrates the tale of an Englishman Phileas Fogg who along with his newly appointed French valet decides to go around the world in 80 days as part of a bet his friends at the Reform Club challenge him with. Verne’s Fogg might have done it in 80 days but the fictional British adventurer’s record was broken by an American journalist some 16 years later. Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, best known as Nellie Bly, her pen name had undertaken the same journey as Fogg but Bly had taken it up as a challenge to do it in 8 days less than what Fogg did. Bly had started the journey on November 14, 132 years ago on her own, thus inspiring generations.
Bly is also known for her new kind of investigative journalism and received lasting fame for her exposé in which she feigned insanity to investigate the reports of harsh treatment given to women at a mental asylum. Apart from her journalism career, she was also an industrialist, inventor, and charity worker.
But how did Bly end up undertaking a journey across the world in 72 days? Originally from Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, she started working for the Pittsburg Dispatch but tired of their ‘women pages’ stories, Bly decided to move to New York but faced rejections from editors who refused to hire a woman before she took on a challenge to fake insanity to expose the Women’s Lunatic Asylum for a permanent job at the New York World, run by Joseph Pulitzer.
In 1888, she suggested to her editor that she take a trip around the world to turn the fictional Fogg’s journey into a real one. A year later in 1889, on November 14 and 132 years ago, Bly boarded the ship Augusta Victoria,a steamer of the Hamburg America Line. Bly just took some very basic items along with a her-a coat, changes of underwear and a small travel bag with essentials. She took some money in American and British currency and set off from Hoboken in New Jersey.
Bly’s path involved going through England, France, where she also met author Jules Verne, then Brindisi in Italy, the Suez Canal, Colombo, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. She was also able to send small reports of her travel y submarine cable networks and the electric telegraph. She travelled by steamships and railroad system through most part of her journey. While crossing the Pacific,
Bly encountered bad weather and arrived in San Francisco two days behind her schedule but was helped by the owner of the New York World who chartered a private train for her to get back home. Bly arrived in New Jersey on January 25, 1890, at 3:51 pm.
The New York newspaper Cosmopolitan has also sent its own reporter, Elizabeth Bisland to beat Bly’s record but Bisland arrived 4 days later than the former, who set a world record and although Bly’s record was broken soon after due to more advanced methods of travel, her achievement is still cited as one of the finest.
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