Nellie Bly was the pen name of Elizabeth Jane Cochran, who pioneered undercover investigative reporting. After ignoring her orders to stick to the gardening section of the paper, she wrote scores of articles about injustice, mostly at Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Although her articles ranged from abject working conditions of young girls to the political oppression in Mexico, her passion for the disenfranchised was evident in all of them. Her most famous exposé, "Ten Days in a Madhouse," was the result of faking insanity and getting herself committed to reveal gross maltreatment and abuse in a mental asylum.
Her biggest claim to fame was attempting to travel the entire globe in 80 days November 1889 to January 1890, like Jules Verne's fictional Phineas Fogg. She traveled light going through France (with a stop to visit Jules Verne himself), the Suez Canal, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan, before crossing the Pacific and arriving in San Francisco. At that point, Pulitzer chartered a private train to get her back at 72 days.
Though she is featured this week as an intrepid traveler, Nellie Bly's legacy is that of an intrepid human who knew her passions and followed them, cultural restrictions be damned.
Nellie Bly Online
Nellie Bly's Book "Around the World in 72 Days"
Wikipedia
PBS American Experience
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