On January 25, 1890, Nellie Bly completed her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days. When she embarked on this daring stunt, Bly was already known for pioneering a brand new form of investigative journalism. However, as readers eagerly kept up with her dispatches about her travels for The New York World, she became an international star. At a time when women still couldn’t vote, Bly’s ability to successfully circumnavigate the globe – and convention – helped further strengthen the fight for women’s rights.
Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran on May 5, 1864, in the town, Cochran’s Mill, PA. When she was six, her wealthy father died and she and her mother ended up being left near poverty after other heirs inherited her father’s mill. Bly ultimately left college to help her mother run a boarding house.
Her anger over a sexist article in The Pittsburgh Dispatch spurred an 18-year-old Bly to pen a pithy, yet powerful response. The editor not only published her rebuttal, but he also offered her a job writing for the newspaper. Using the pen name Nellie Bly, she quickly became a popular contributor to the paper. She reported on poor working conditions for children and women in factories.
She wrote her most famous article in 1887 after moving to New York City to write for The New York World. She feigned mental illness to gain admittance as a patient at a notoriously neglectful insane asylum for women, Blackwell Island, now Roosevelt Island. Thanks to her undercover reporting, she not only invented a new type of journalism but also spurred New York City to clean up Blackwell Island to better serve its patients.
Even though she became a respected reporter in her field in spite of her gender, she still had to fight for her next big story idea. After reading the novel “Around the World in 80 Days” by Jules Verne, she wanted to beat the fictitious record set by the protagonist, Phileas Fogg. With enough successful clips under her belt, she was hoping she had earned enough journalistic street cred to take on this stunt.
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However, when she approached The New York World editor with her pitch to travel the globe in less than 80 days and document it, her editor turned her down. He told her, “No one but a man can do this.” Her response was, “Start the man, and I’ll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.”
Bly eventually managed to convince her editor to let her embark on the trip. She started her first leg of the journey from Hoboken, NJ to London, England aboard the steamship “Augusta Victoria” on November 14, 1889. A train took her to Paris, where she
made a quick side trip to Amiens to meet Verne. In her travels through Europe, Egypt, modern-day Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Hong Kong, Bly traveled by train, steamship, horse, donkey, rickshaw, and other various vehicles. She sent accounts of her journey to the New York World, which resulted in a large increase in readership for the newspaper.
Meanwhile, Cosmopolitan magazine decided to send their own female reporter, Elizabeth Bisland, to race Bly around the world. One day after Bly set sail to England, Bisland set off in the opposite direction. Bisland headed to San Francisco, where she was scheduled to board a ship to Japan and continue her journey.
When Bly finished her trip around the globe on January 25, 1890, in a record-setting 72 days, she also won the race against Bisland. Bly’s competitor finished four days later.
Bly retired from journalism at the age of 30 after marrying a millionaire, Robert Seamen. In 1903, Seamen died and left her in control of his successful manufacturing company.
Before Bly died on January 27, 1922, she had returned to journalism to cover World War I, as well as many important issues that affected women. As an early female pioneer in journalism, she paved the way for women across the globe today who bravely report everywhere from war zones to news desks.