Reporter Nellie Bly became one of America's first investigative journalists, often working undercover.In 1889 Joseph Pulitzer's New York World sponsors a 72 day trip around the world featuring daily reports filed by telegraph by Nellie Bly. Around the World in Seventy-Two Days is an 1890 book by journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, writing under her pseudonym, Nellie Bly.

New York World Building

Nellie Bly's 72 day trip around the world

site of the Day

The Girl Puzzle monument honoring Nellie Bly opened in December 2021 and was designed by artist Amanda Matthews to celebrate women’s resilience. It features five towering bronze faces—Bly and four others in varied patinas representing diverse identities—some fractured and repaired to symbolize strength after hardship. Words by Bly are engraved behind each face, and the monument is named for her first published work, The Girl Puzzle.

The Girl Puzzle

The Octagon, built in 1834 on Roosevelt Island, was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis as the entrance to the New York City Lunatic Asylum, which opened in 1841. Constructed from island-quarried stone, it is the last surviving remnant of the hospital. The asylum later became infamous through Nellie Bly’s 1887 exposé Ten Days in a Mad-House.

After decades of neglect and fires, it was restored and integrated into a residential complex.

Post Graduate Hospital? [No, dress typical of earlier period, possibly Blackwell's Island?]

New York City Lunatic Asylum

Aafter moving to New York and facing repeated rejections from editors unwilling to hire a woman, Nellie Bly secured an undercover assignment at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. She feigned insanity to investigate abuse at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island), enduring harsh conditions for ten days before her release. Her exposé, published as Ten Days in a Mad-House, sparked public outrage, led to reforms, and made the 23-year-old Bly famous, helping launch the era of stunt journalism.