Post by Diana Hildebrandt

"Energy rightly applied and directed will accomplish anything.” The one who said that was the first person who took the trip of Jules Verne's novel "Around the World in 80 Days" (1872) for real and beat the famous fictional adventurer Phileas Fogg in just 72 days, #onthisday 131 years ago, on 25th January 1890. The world record holder was a bold 26-year-old journalist from NYC. This is her (yes, her!) remarkable story: Better known by her later pen name Nellie Bly, young Elizabeth Cochrane (1864-1922) became a journalist through a furious letter, in which she criticised an article on the duties of girls. The newspaper's editor was so impressed by her courage & eloquence that he offered her a job as writer. Bly became the first investigative journalist, spending 10 days undercover in a mental asylum for women. The articles on her experience caused the reform of these institutions in America. After the death of her husband in 1904 she ran the Iron Clad Manufactury for cans, being one of the leading female industrialists of her time. She also invented and held patents on different steel cans & barrels. Bly covered the first woman suffragist procession to Washington 1913, predicting that it would be "1920 before #women get the right to vote". She was right. ©DH