If you hit up Google today, you’ll likely see the image above occupying the spot of the Google Doodle. The tech giant is today celebrating the 151st birthday of one Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, perhaps better known to the world as the journalist Nellie Bly:

Nellie Bly (May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922) was the pen name of American journalist Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman. She was also a writer, industrialist, inventor, and a charity worker who was widely known for her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days, in emulation of Jules Verne‘s fictional character Phileas Fogg, and an exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She was a pioneer in her field, and launched a new kind of investigative journalism.

Nellie Bly should also be well-known to Ultima fans; she was one of the historical figures who starred in Martian Dreams:

In Martian Dreams (1895), Nellie Bly volunteered to assist in Nikola Tesla’s 1895 mission to Mars to attempt to rescue the ill-fated passengers of Percival Lowell’s unintended voyage to the red planet in 1893.

Speaking with the Avatar, Bly discussed the research she had done eight years earlier for her exposé “Ten Days in a Mad-House,” which delved into the inhumane and unsanitary conditions of the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Bly had feigned mental illness in order to gain access to the facility, and had found once institutionalized that patients were subjected to gross abuse and brutality at the hands of their supposed caretakers. As a result of her experiences, she admitted an anxiety regarding psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who was also part of the mission to Mars, citing that he reminded her of doctors she’d encountered in the asylum. She had fewer reservations about Dr. C.L. Blood, and stated her relief that the physician was available to treat explorers.

Bly kept detailed notes regarding the party’s encounters and experiences on Mars. These notes were later entrusted to Dr. Johann Schleimann Spector, who returned with them to his native time (1991 AD). It was intended that they eventually be released to the public at such a time when humanity was ready to know of the reality of the Martian people.

You can read more about Nellie Bly and some of her more well-known journalistic accomplishments at Wikipedia.

The First Age of Update: And here’s a nod to some good work by Teknocrat123, who added a mention of Bly’s appearance in Martian Dreams to that Wikipedia entry.