The Amazing Nellie Bly

Okay, I guess my history lessons were incomplete in North Carolina public school. I just found out about the amazing Nellie Bly, a young woman of the Victorian Age who didn’t behave at all like a person of her age and gender was expected to. In the late 1880′s she broke jounalistic barriers, becoming the first true investigative reporter, although the male dominated publishing world called her a “stunt reporter”. She faked being insane for 10 days, getting committed to an insane asylum, to get her big break with Joseph Pulitzer’s “The World” NYC newspaper. But it’s her world travels that caught my attention as I searched for an interesting DVD for my weekend viewing at the local library. As usual PBS comes through with a fascinating documentary in their American Experience series.

She went around the world in 72 days, her intention to beat Jules Vern’s fictional character’s journey in his classic, Around the World in 80 Days. She met the iconic author in England before hopscotching around the globe via steamship and locomotive. Her stories were sent by telegraph from little Italian towns who had no idea what country New York City was in. She sent photographs back of locations in southern India and the Far East that had never been seen in a daily newspaper. When her ship arrived in San Francisco for the cross country trek back east, her boss commissioned a private train with  a single engine and private sleeping car to wisk her towards Chicago and eventual success in this then unheard of goal. She became the best known woman in the world, a celebrity before society had couched the term.

I’m wondering if I’m the only one in the Matador Travel Community to be ignorant of this bright spirit? A writer friend of mine couldn’t believe I wasn’t aware of her, assumed Nellie must have been one of my role models, considering how my life has unfolded. In these modern traveling times could her journey be replicated, using the same transportaion modes? Of course the dispatches on the journey could be more immediate and perhaps such a trip is cliched these days with so many people circumnavigating the globe. In some ways it goes against many’s “slow travel” tendencies. But my mind can’t help but go “Hmmmmm…..”. Any thoughts?