Il giro del mondo in 72 giorni
Grantland racconta la storia di coraggio e determinazione che portò la giornalista del New York World (giornale diretto da Joseph Pulitzer) Nellie Bly a viaggiare intorno al mondo nel tempo record di appena 72 giorni, 6 ore e 11 minuti.
Era il 1889. 16 anni dopo l'uscita dell'iconico romanzo di Jules Verne, Il giro del mondo in 80 giorni.
In 1888, she went to her bosses at the New York World, Joseph Pulitzer's paper, where she had talked her way into a job the previous year, and told them she wanted to circumnavigate the earth. Her idea was to try to beat the time of Phileas Fogg, the hero of Jules Verne's massively popular 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days. She'd send dispatches back to the paper, make an adventure out of it. Her editor was in favor, but the World's business manager -- who liked the concept -- wanted to send a man.
"It is impossible for you to do it," he told her. "You are a woman and would need a protector." Even if she could travel alone, he said, she’d want to take too much baggage. "There is no use talking about it," he insisted. "No one but a man could do this."
"Very well," she said. "Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him."
She was 24 when she said this. The next year, a few months after her 25th birthday, the paper said yes, and she set sail.
She brought one suitcase.
