On 14th of November 1889, journalist Nellie Bly (1864 – 1922) set off on her round the world journey. This followed the success of the publication in 1873 of Jules Verne’s ‘Around the World in Eighty Days.’

Travelling by steamship and train Nellie Bly actually met Jules Verne when passing through France.

She arrived back from this extraordinary adventure in New Jersey on January 25, 1890, at 3:51 pm.

As a journalist her most famous reporting was of conditions in a mental hospital.

A journalist and novelist, Nellie Bly married millionaire Robert Seaman in 1895. The groom was 73, the bride 31.

She started to run her husband’s manufacturing company the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co which made steel containers. She patented several of her own inventions.