Sponsored by the New York World, reporter Nellie Bly boarded a steamer bound for England, determined to beat the fictional 80-day journey of Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg. Carrying only a small bag, she crossed oceans and continents by ship, train, and rickshaw, filing dispatches that captivated American readers and made her a household name.
Nellie Bly, born Elizabeth Cochrane, had already made her name exposing the horrors of an insane asylum by feigning madness to get committed. Her editor at the New York World agreed to bankroll an even bigger stunt: circling the globe faster than Phileas Fogg, the hero of Jules Verne's popular novel 'Around the World in Eighty Days.' She left Hoboken on a Thursday morning with a single handbag, a sturdy dress, and an overcoat.
Along the way she met Verne himself in France, who doubted she could beat his fictional timeline. She pressed on through the Suez Canal, Ceylon, Hong Kong, and Japan, racing a rival reporter from a competing newspaper who was attempting the same feat in the opposite direction, unbeknownst to Bly until partway through.
She arrived back in New Jersey 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes later, shattering Fogg's fictional record and becoming an international sensation. Crowds cheered her at train stations across America. Her journey proved that a woman traveling alone could out-hustle the imagination of one of the era's greatest novelists, and it turned travel journalism into front-page spectacle.