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At first the editor was against the idea. He tried to say 'no' to Elizabeth. But after he heard her ideas for stories, he said that he would give her a chance.
Elizabeth began to write exciting stories. On each story she put the name Nellie Bly. This name soon became hers.
Women reporters for other newspapers wrote stories about flowers and dresses. But not Nellie. She wanted to help poor people. She sometimes went to dangerous places to get the stories she wanted.
At first many readers were upset. They said it was a man's job to write about poor people who had no homes. In the 1800s factories1 were not safe. When Nellie wrote that factories were dangerous places to work, the owners of the factories became angry. At last she left Pittsburgh and began to look for a job as a reporter in New York City.
Many people in New York City heard of the woman reporter from Pittsburgh, but only one person wanted to give her a job. Joseph Pulitzer was happy to put Nellie to work on his newspaper, the World.
To get her stories, Nellie sometimes pretended to be someone else. She lived with poor people, worked in factories, and even had herself put in jail2. This is why readers could believe the things she said in her stories.
Although Nellie wrote many stories that helped people, she became best known for her trip around the world. She read Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, a make-believe story about a man's eighty-day trip around the world.
Going around the world in only eighty days sounded impossible, but Nellie thought that it could be done. Joseph Pulitzer agreed with her. He gave her money for the trip.
On November 14, 1889, at 9:40 a.m., Nellie left New Jersey on a steamship. The steamship sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and landed on the south shore of England.
From England, Nellie sailed to France. Jules Verne came to greet her and wish her luck. Then she went by train to Italy.
Nellie boarded another steamship to travel across the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal, and the Red Sea. Then she went across the Indian Ocean to China and Japan.
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