In 1885, Elizabeth Jane Cochrane of Pittsburgh read a newspaper editorial claiming women belonged only in the home. Outraged, she sent a letter so sharp that the editor offered her a reporting job — along with a pen name inspired by a Stephen Foster song: Nellie Bly.
Bly refused to be confined to the “women’s pages.” At 22, she went to Mexico as a foreign correspondent, exposing poverty and government corruption until officials forced her to leave. The danger only strengthened her resolve.
In 1887, she took on her most daring investigation. Pretending to be insane, she gained entry to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in New York. For ten days, she endured overcrowding, abuse, and neglect. Her exposé, Ten Days in a Mad-House, shocked the nation and sparked major reforms in mental health care.
Two years later, inspired by Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, Bly set out alone to beat fiction with fact. Traveling by ship, train, and carriage, she circled the globe in just 72 days, setting a world record and captivating readers everywhere.
Even after marrying and running a business, she returned to frontline reporting during World War I, becoming one of the first women to do so.
Nellie Bly died in 1922, but her fearless spirit lives on. She showed that relentless curiosity and courage can change the world — no matter who you are.