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January 25, 1890: Nellie Bly Completes 72 Day Trip Around the Globe

 

 

Born in 1864, Elizabeth Jane Cochran, better known by her journalism pen name of Nellie Bly, began her career when she wrote an angry rebuttal to an anti-woman piece in the Pittsburg Dispatch entitled What Girls are Good For.  The editor offered her a job and Bly never looked  back, becoming an internationally known reporter.  Perhaps her most famous exploit started in November 1889 when she embarked on an around the world trip to beat the fictional journey of Phineas Fogg’s  depicted in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days.  Her paper, the New York World, offered a contest for their readers to guess how long the trip would take her.  During the trip she met Jules Vernes and developed a global following as she filed stories throughout her journey.  She set a world record when she arrived back in New York on January 15, 1890, seventy-two days after she set out.

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