History Alive: Nellie Bly

Nellie Bly, adventurer, inventor, and ground-breaking investigative reporter was the pen name of Elizabeth Jane Cochrane. In 1887, to be hired as a reporter with Pulitzer’s New York The World, she feigned insanity to get committed to a lunatic asylum with no guarantee of release. Her subsequent articles on the conditions and treatment of the “patients” led to improvements in the care for the mentally ill. In January of 1890, she bested the time of the fictional Phileas Fogg from the book, Around the World in Eighty Days.