A journalist beat Jules Verne's fictional 80-day trip around the world by 8 days

In 1889, reporter Nellie Bly set out to circle the globe faster than the hero of Jules Verne's "Around the World in Eighty Days." Travelling alone by steamship, train and rickshaw with a single small bag, she completed the trip in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes, becoming a world-famous celebrity and proving a woman could travel solo across the globe.

— Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly's Book: Around the World in Seventy-Two Days — 1890