Nellie Bly sets out to circle the globe faster than Phileas Fogg. Another journalist leaves the same day in the opposite direction—and Bly does not know she is racing her.
Nellie Bly was racing time. Another newspaper quietly added a person.
At 9:40 on Thursday morning, 14 November 1889, Nellie Bly departed Hoboken aboard the steamship Augusta Victoria.
Her objective was to travel around the world faster than Phileas Fogg, the fictional traveller who completed the journey in eighty days in Jules Verne's novel.
Bly intended to do it in seventy-five.
She carried one small travelling bag.
Elsewhere in New York, another publication was making a very rapid decision.
Cosmopolitan magazine wanted a competing journey in the opposite direction. Its literary editor, Elizabeth Bisland, initially resisted the assignment. She had guests coming for dinner. She had no suitable travelling clothes. She had no particular desire to become a public spectacle.
Her editor persuaded her.
Bisland left New York that evening, heading west. Bly was already travelling east.
The race had begun.
One participant did not know it existed.
Bly continued through Britain, France, the Mediterranean, South Asia and East Asia believing that her opponent was the calendar. She met Jules Verne in France and sent dispatches home whenever schedules permitted.
Only after reaching Hong Kong on Christmas Day did a steamship official tell her that she was likely to lose the race.
Bly was confused.
She knew she was racing time. She did not know that time had acquired a name, an employer and a westbound itinerary.
Bisland had gained an advantage, but a missed connection in Britain delayed her final return.
Bly crossed the Pacific, reached San Francisco and boarded a special train arranged by the New York World for the journey east.
On 25 January 1890, she arrived back in New Jersey after 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes.
She had beaten Phileas Fogg.
She had also beaten Elizabeth Bisland, whose existence as a competitor she had discovered more than halfway around the planet.
A newspaper sent Nellie Bly around the world to race a fictional man.
A magazine sent another woman the other way and forgot to tell Bly until Hong Kong.
A journalist attempting to beat a fictional eighty-day journey learned halfway around the world that a rival publication had secretly turned her expedition into a two-person race.
Nellie Bly left to race the clock. In Hong Kong, the clock introduced her opponent.