Seaman, Elizabeth

Seaman, Elizabeth (Nellie Bly, pen name) (b. Cochrane) (c. 1865–1922) journalist; born in Cochrane Mills, Pa. As a reporter for the New York World she won renown for such stories as her expose of conditions in an insane asylum on New York City's Blackwell's Island, where she posed as an inmate. In 1889–90 she made a round-the-world trip in 72 days, bettering the 80-day record of Jules Verne's fictional Phineas Fogg. A pioneering woman journalist, she took her pen name from a Stephen Foster song about a social reformer.