The Women Who Traveled Around the World in Less Than 80 Days in the Late 1800s
Traveling around the world in the late 1800s was a challenging task, especially when trying to recreate the travels in the famous Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days. But one American journalist and a rival she didn’t know about took on the feat during the time period. They not only shattered how many days it took to travel around the world, but one also had enough time to interview Verne himself. Jules Verne released Around the World in Eighty Days in 1872, and the story told of the fictional character named Phileas Fogg, who wagered that he could travel from the Reform Club in London around the world and end up back at the club in less than 80 days. Verne had written the story based on the innovations that had taken place worldwide, starting in 1869 with the Transcontinental Railroad across the United States, the opening of the Suez Canal, and the railway connecting the Indian sub-continent. These innovations made travel around the world plausible, but testing Verne’s timeframe didn’t first happen until 1889. Two people, who were not doing it together, took on the challenge, and both were women. One of those women was an American journalist named Nellie Bly.Bly was born as Elizabeth Jane Cochran in 1864 in Pennsylvania, the 13th child of a judge whom the town was named after. Her father died when she was six, and her mother later remarried. It became an abusive relationship, and her mother divorced, causing Cochran to leave school. The family then moved to Pittsburgh in 1880. In 1885, Cochran read an article in the newspaper titled “What Girls Are Good For.” She was incensed with the piece and wrote a response to the paper under the pseudonym “Lonely Orphan Girl.” The editor of The Pittsburgh Dispatch, George Madden, was impressed with her writing and published her letter while also offering her an invitation to his office. He then had her write a full article in opposition to the one she had initially responded to, which led her to have a full-time writing position at the paper.
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