{
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "NewsArticle",
    "@id": "https://badiyaa.com/nellie-bly-around-world-72-days-1889/#article",
    "mainEntityOfPage": "https://badiyaa.com/nellie-bly-around-world-72-days-1889/",
    "headline": "Nellie Bly set out on November 14, 1889 to beat Phileas Fogg’s 80 days and circled the globe in 72",
    "description": "Nellie Bly left on November 14, 1889 to beat Phileas Fogg's fictional 80 days, and completed her 24,898-mile trip around the world in 72.",
    "datePublished": "2026-11-10T21:32:00+00:00",
    "dateModified": "2026-11-10T21:32:00+00:00",
    "author": {
        "@type": "Organization",
        "name": "Badiyaa Editorial Desk",
        "url": "https://badiyaa.com/author/editorial-desk/"
    },
    "publisher": {
        "@type": "NewsMediaOrganization",
        "@id": "https://badiyaa.com/#organization",
        "name": "Badiyaa",
        "url": "https://badiyaa.com/",
        "logo": {
            "@type": "ImageObject",
            "url": "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/badiyaa-logo-color-600x60-1.png",
            "width": 600,
            "height": 60
        },
        "email": "badiyaavideo@gmail.com",
        "publishingPrinciples": "https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/",
        "correctionsPolicy": "https://badiyaa.com/corrections/",
        "actionableFeedbackPolicy": "https://badiyaa.com/contact/",
        "ownershipFundingInfo": "https://badiyaa.com/about/#ownership",
        "sameAs": [
            "https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61595518283625",
            "https://www.instagram.com/badiyaa.com.ai/",
            "https://www.threads.net/@badiyaa.com.ai"
        ],
        "parentOrganization": {
            "@type": "Organization",
            "name": "Rezilient Digital",
            "url": "https://www.rezilientdigital.com/",
            "address": {
                "@type": "PostalAddress",
                "streetAddress": "Fl No 3, Nav Shyam Sadan, Plot No 38, Pestom Sagar, Chembur",
                "addressLocality": "Mumbai",
                "addressRegion": "Maharashtra",
                "postalCode": "400089",
                "addressCountry": "IN"
            },
            "sameAs": [
                "https://www.linkedin.com/company/rezilientdigital"
            ]
        }
    },
    "isAccessibleForFree": true,
    "inLanguage": "en-US",
    "wordCount": 612,
    "image": [
        "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/round-the-world-nellie-bly-board-game-board-and-pieces.webp",
        "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/round-the-world-nellie-bly-board-game-board-and-pieces-1024x576.webp"
    ],
    "articleSection": "History",
    "keywords": "Around the World in Eighty Days, Elizabeth Bisland, Jules Verne, Nellie Bly",
    "articleBody": "At 9:40 a.m. on November 14, 1889, a 25-year-old reporter who wrote as Nellie Bly boarded the steamer Augusta Victoria with two days’ notice, aiming to do in real life what Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg had only done in fiction. She came home 72 days later, eight days ahead of Fogg. Bly, born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Pennsylvania in 1864, was already famous. Two years earlier she had faked insanity to get inside the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in New York, and her report, later the book Ten Days in a Mad-House, prompted reforms there. As a frustrated 21-year-old stuck on fashion and gardening pages, she had promised herself “to do something no girl has done before.” The pitch nobody believed According to Bly’s biography, she first proposed the trip to her editor at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York paper in 1888. He doubted it on three counts: she spoke only English, a woman would pack too much, and she would need a male escort. A year later she went anyway, alone for almost the whole journey, on a route of 24,898 miles (40,070 kilometers). The route, stop by stop Her path ran east across the Atlantic and then around the world: England, then France, where she detoured to Amiens to meet Jules Verne himself Brindisi in Italy and the Suez Canal Colombo in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka Penang and Singapore, then part of the Straits Settlements Hong Kong and Japan, before the Pacific crossing and the run across the United States To keep readers hooked, her paper ran a “Nellie Bly Guessing Match,” inviting them to predict her arrival to the second. The grand prize started as a trip to Europe and later became spending money for one. A rival going the other way Bly had a rival. On hearing of the stunt, the new owner of a young New York monthly magazine sent writer Elizabeth Bisland around the globe in the opposite direction. Bisland lost her chance in England, where she was told, apparently wrongly, that she had missed the fast German steamer Ems. She had to take the slower Bothnia from Queenstown, Ireland, on January 18 and reached Manhattan on January 30, 1890, after 76 and a half days. Bly got there first, arriving in New York on January 25, 1890. The numbers behind the record From November 14 to January 25 is 72 days: 16 left in November, 31 in December and 25 in January. Spread over 24,898 miles, that works out to roughly 346 miles a day, or about 14 miles every hour, day and night, using ships and trains of the 1880s. She beat Fogg’s fictional 80 days by eight days and Bisland by four and a half. The record did not last long. Within months, George Francis Train lowered it to 67 days. Bly’s version of the story came out in 1890 as the book Nellie Bly’s Book: Around the World in Seventy-two Days, and a board game, Round the World with Nellie Bly, was created the same year. After the trip Bly later ran the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co., which made steel containers, and held US patents for a milk can and a stacking garbage can under her married name, Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1998. Long journeys still capture readers. Badiyaa followed Karl Bushby’s 31,000-mile walk around the world, which ended in Hull after 28 years, and traced how another newspaper adventurer, Henry Morton Stanley, first printed “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” The anniversary of Bly’s departure falls this Saturday, November 14, 137 years after the Augusta Victoria left port. Further reading Wikipedia: Nellie Bly Wikipedia: Elizabeth Bisland Image: Mary Mark Ockerbloom, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.",
    "markdown": "https://badiyaa.com/nellie-bly-around-world-72-days-1889.md"
}