On this day, Elizabeth Jane Cochran, better known as Nellie Bly, left New Jersey on the steamship Augusta Victoria in her attempt to turn Jules Verne’s fictional Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) into fact for the first time. She arrived back in New York seventy-two days later having travelled alone for almost the entire journey. Bly was no newcomer to bold adventures and had already made a name for herself as a pioneer female investigative journalist. In her first undercover investigation, in a copper cable factory, she provided a firsthand view of the poor working conditions for women and children. She then spent six months in Mexico as a foreign correspondent, before a second undercover investigation in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Feigning insanity, Bly spent ten days in the asylum where she experienced the deplorable conditions firsthand. Her book Ten Days in a Mad-House, caused a sensation, prompted the asylum to implement reforms, and brought her lasting fame.
