Elizabeth Cochrane was born in Pennsylvania in 1867. Offended by a Pittsburgh newspaper editorial that claimed that “girls were good for nothing except cooking, sewing, and bearing children”, she wrote a fiery retort. Soon she was hired by the paper’s editor, but with the stipulation that she use a pen name. Thus, reporter Nellie Bly was born.
Eventually, she moved to New York. She began reporting for Joseph Pulitzer’s paper, The New York World. After going undercover by feigning madness for 10 days, she did an exposé on Blackwell’s Island, an asylum for the insane. Her biggest reporting assignment came soon after and was even more noteworthy.
In 1889, she set off on a race around the world. The goal was to beat the record of fictional hero Phileas Fogg of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. She succeeded, traveling by steamship, train, rickshaw, horse and buggy, and burro. Her record time - just over 72 days. At only the age of 22, she had crossed continents, oceans, and the Suez Canal. She endured monsoons and seasickness. Her reports on her travels enthralled readers.
See the Ernest C. Miller papers at UW’s American Heritage Center. to learn more about the travels of Nellie Bly.