The Return
Nellie Bly’s homecoming reception to Jersey City in 1890 — Public Domain
When Nellie Bly returned to Jersey City, 72 days after leaving, in 1890, 20 celebratory gunshots at two nearby parks greeted her. A New Jersey crowd of cheering supporters. She would beat Vernes’s story by eight days and her plan by three days. Bisland wouldn’t arrive until four and a half days after. Bly would say that she was glad to be home:
“I took off my cap and wanted to yell with the crowd, not because I had gone around the world in seventy-two days, but because I was home again.”
Her adventure was the fastest to go around the world, even though Magellan is often credited as the first. Nellie Bly isn’t a common name often heard in our history books, but maybe she should be — in 1998, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
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