Nellie Bly - a new-found personal hero

I am not quite sure how, but I managed to reach the age of 38 and never hear of Nellie Bly.

Now that I know about her, I feel this to have been a serious gap in my education.

Once again, I owe this expansion in my knowledge to Google, who today, May 5, 2015, featured a doodle honoring Nellie Bly, about whom a Google search returns the following descriptions:

• Daring Journalist
• Victorian Sensation
• Daredevil Reporter
• All-around Feminist Bad-Ass
• Trailblazing Journalist

And so, at a very high-level, here is what I know (and appreciate) about Elizabeth Jane Cochran/Cochrane, who wrote under the pseudonym of Nellie Bly for Joseph Pulitzer at New York World.

1. Her nickname as a girl was "Pinky" because she wore the color so much.
2. She rejected the idea that a women's place was only in the home, and her response argued how important it was for women to be independent and self-reliant.
3. Becoming a journalist, she rejected the traditional roles of fashion, society, and gardening, and under her own initiative, became a foreign correspondent from Mexico. Eventually, she had to leave the country to avoid arrest for criticizing the government.
4. She went undercover in an insane asylum in order to shed light on reports of abuse and neglect within the system, leading to a grand jury investigation and an overhaul of the system.
5. She set the first world record for traveling around the world in just over 72 days.
6. She married a millionaire manufacturer 42 years her senior, became the president of his company, and invented the stacking garbage can and a milk can. The company eventually went bankrupt due to embezzlement by employees.
7. She returned to journalism, became a war correspondent on Europe's East Front, and covered the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913.

* All of the above points are from Wikipedia.

For future reading, here is a website with links to her articles: http://www.nellieblyonline.com/herwriting