Nellie Bly

Bly's real name was Elizabeth Cochrane. She had adopted her pen name from a Stephen Foster song when she began writing for the Pittsburgh Dispatch at eighteen, after sending the editor an angry letter in response to an editorial about women's proper place being in the home. The editor was impressed enough to hire her.

She moved to New York in 1887 and talked her way into a job at Joseph Pulitzer's New York World by proposing to go undercover at the Blackwell's Island asylum for women. She feigned mental illness, was committed, and spent ten days inside documenting the abuse and neglect she witnessed: patients forced to eat rotten food, beaten by nurses, tied together with rope, and left in freezing conditions. Her exposé, published as "Ten Days in a Mad-House," caused a public outcry and led to increased funding for mental health facilities and a grand jury investigation.

The around-the-world trip was her next major stunt. Pulitzer's paper covered the journey day by day, publishing maps of her route and updates at every stop. Readers followed her through England, France, the Suez Canal, Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. In France, she visited Jules Verne, who wished her well but doubted she'd beat his character's record. She did, by eight days.

The World sponsored a contest asking readers to guess her arrival time, receiving nearly a million entries. When Bly's train pulled into Jersey City on January 25, 1890, fireworks were set off and brass bands played. She was 25 years old and had circled the planet with a change of underwear, a jar of cold cream, and an overcoat.

Bly went on to cover the Eastern Front during World War I and later ran a major steel manufacturing company. She died in 1922 at 57.