Nov 19, 2020 2 min read

On Nov. 14, 1889, New York World reporter and Western Pennsylvania native Nellie Bly started a 25,000-mile journey around the world, inspired by the Jules Verne book “Around the World in 80 Days.”

Now, 131 years later, the Senator John Heinz History Center will share her adventures in “real time” with weekly social media updates and blog posts that follow her journey around the globe. For each post, History Center curators and researchers will incorporate archival information, images and Bly’s firsthand accounts that document her challenges, triumphs and the colorful characters she met along the way.

Updates are being posted weekly on the History Center’s Twitter account and at www.heinzhistorycenter.org/nelliebly.

Born in 1864, Elizabeth Jane Cochrane began a career in journalism as a teenager. While a reporter for The Pittsburgh Dispatch, she took “Nellie Bly” as her pen name, taken from a song by Pittsburgher Stephen Foster. She rose to fame as a reporter for The New York World, when she went undercover as a patient at the Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum, and pioneered a new era of investigative journalism.

In 1889, she decided to travel the world faster than Verne’s character Phileas Fogg in “Around the World in 80 Days.” The world rejoiced when Bly successfully returned from her journey on Jan. 25, 1890, 72 days, six hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds after her departure. It beat the fictional record by more than a week.

Ar 1 p.m. Monday, the History Center will host a virtual conversation on Nellie Bly with historians and researchers.

For more information, visit www.heinzhistorycenter.org.