Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland Race Around The World

Adventure Almanac Episode 9 & 10

Once the Suez Canal and a few transcontinental railroads were finished in the 1870s, Jules Verne imagined a journey around the world could be completed in less than eighty days. In 1889, his idea was still fiction. Until Nellie Bly convinced the editor at The World newspaper that she was the person to smash the record for the fastest known time around the world. When the editor at the Cosmopolitan magazine found out about Bly’s plans, he believed that he could send someone around the world in the opposite direction and beat her. Eight hours later, Elizabeth Bisland was on a train headed West.

Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s race around the world captured the attention of America and the world. Part of the attraction was that they were young women traveling alone in a time when women rarely traveled alone. But mostly, it opened up people’s imagination to the idea that world travel was possible.

Their stories of exotic cultures and misadventures on the high seas filled the headlines of newspapers. The proliferation of telegraph cables meant that readers could follow their adventures in almost real-time. There was endless speculation and even a contest to guess how long it would take to complete the trip. It was a sensational story and a wild adventure for both Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland.