Nellie Bly, investigative journalist

1865 Nellie Bly (d. January 27, 1922), pseudonym of Elizabeth Jane Cochran/Cochrane, a pioneering female investigative journalist.

On January 25, 1890 Bly bettered Phileas Fogg’s fictional Around the World in Eighty Days feat by doing it in just 72 days, six hours, eleven minutes and fourteen seconds after her departure from Hoboken, New York on November 14, 1889.

Born to Judge Michael Cochran and Mary Jane Kennedy Cochran, part of the large Cochran family of Apollo, Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Cochrane revolutionised journalism for women.

In September 1887, Bly talked her way into the office of John Cockerill, managing editor of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Cockerill hired the unknown journalist and gave Bly her first assignment – to be committed to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. Impersonating an insane woman, Nellie Bly came back from the asylum ten days later with stories of cruel beatings, ice cold baths and forced, rancid meals. This adventurous and daring stunt propelled Bly into the limelight of New York journalism, and, at only 23, Nellie Bly had become a pioneer of a proud tradition that was well known in the West until the early 21st Century: investigative journalism ...

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with many more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date (or your birthday).