Elizabeth Cochran

Elizabeth Cochran bulled her way into her first job as a newspaper writer at the age of twenty-one in 1885. When her editor wouldn’t give her the kind of assignments she was seeking, however, she left Pennsylvania and signed on with Joseph Pulitzer’s sensationalistic New York World, where she soon introduced and perfected the art of undercover reporting. Under the pseudonym “Nellie Bly,” Cochran became famous for her inside investigations of such wildly different (and often dangerous) settings as an insane asylum, a sweatshop, a petty crime ring, and a ballet corps. And her articles on poverty and political corruption in Mexico got her thrown out of that country. But it was her madcap trip around the world in just over 72 days -- beginning in 1889 and unaccompanied by male companionship, of course -- that sealed down her status as a historical figure who just happened to be a woman who just happened to love living on the edge.