Bly, Nellie

1864 - Born on the 5th day of May this year in Cochran's Mills, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, and forty miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

1880 - Her family moved to Pittsburgh.

1887 - She left the Pittsburgh Dispatch in this year for New York City.

1888 - She suggested to her editor at the New York World that she take trip around the world, mimicking Jules Verne's book Around the World in Eighty Days.

1889 - She left New York on her 24,899-mile journey.

1890 - Arrived in New York. At the time this was a world record for circling the earth, though George Francis Train, who completed the journey in 67 days, bested it a few months later.

1894 - Married millionaire manufacturer Robert Seaman this year, which at 72 was forty-four years her senior.

1904 - Invented and patented the steel barrel that was the model for the 55-gallon drum still in widespread use in the United States. Her husband also died this year.

1922 - She died of pneumonia at St. Mark's Hospital on 27th of January in New York City this year, at age 57.