September 1, 1902: "A Trip to the Moon" Premieres

September 1, 1902: The 1st science fiction film premieres. It is Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), directed by Georges Méliès.

The film is black & white, silent, and runs 18 minutes. It was inspired by Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, and its 1870 sequel Around the Moon. A group of astronomers get into a capsule, and are fired from a cannon to the Moon, where they find aliens. It is widely agreed to be an anti-imperialist satire.

The image of the capsule landing in the eye of "the Man in the Moon" became an icon. It may also have helped to further the trope that "the Moon is made of green cheese."

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September 1, 1902 was a Monday. It was Labor Day, so all 16 teams then in what would later be called Major League Baseball played doubleheaders:

* The St. Louis Cardinals swept the New York Giants, 6-4 and 8-2 at the Polo Grounds. In the 2nd game, Stan Yerkes outpitched Christy Mathewson.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates swept the Brooklyn Superbas, 4-3 and 8-7 at Washington Park in Brooklyn. The Superbas became the Dodgers in 1911. Honus Wagner went 2-for-8 on the day.

* There was a split at the South End Grounds in Boston. The Boston Beaneaters won the opener, 7-6. The Cincinnati Reds won the nightcap, 7-4. The Beaneaters became the Braves in 1912.

* There was a split at National League Park (later renamed Baker Bowl) in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Phillies won the 1st game, 11-3. The Chicago Cubs won the 2nd game, 6-1.

* The Cleveland Bronchos not only swept the Boston Americans, they shut them out, 10-0 and 8-0. The team later known as the Naps, the Indians and the Guardians got 6-hit shutouts from both Earl Moore and Bill Bernhard.

* The Detroit Tigers swept the Washington Senators, 4-2 and 13-1 at Bennett Park in Detroit. In the 1911-12 off-season, Bennett Park was torn down, and what would eventually be named Tiger Stadium was built on the site.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 8-4 at South Side Park in Chicago. This was followed by a 2nd game that was tied, 5-5 after 9 innings, when it was called due to darkness. The Orioles had already been bought and stripped of their best players, and the franchise was returned to the American League at the end of the season. A new franchise was granted to New York for 1903, and it would eventually become the Yankees. But they and the 1901-02 Orioles were not the same team.

* And the St. Louis Browns swept the Philadelphia Athletics, 5-1 and 4-3 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

January 30, 1873: Jules Verne Publishes "Around the World In Eighty Days"

January 30, 1873: Jules Verne publishes his novel Around the World In Eighty Days, one of the greatest adventure stories ever written.

Verne was born on February 8, 1828 in Nantes, France. At age 6, he was sent to a boarding school in that city. The teacher was the wife of a naval captain who had disappeared at sea about 30 years before. She told the students that he was not dead, but that he was a shipwrecked castaway, and, like Daniel Defoe's character Robinson Crusoe, would one day make it off his desert island and back to civilization. If he ever did, he never returned to her. But the idea of such adventure, and similar adventures, was put in young Jules' mind.

While attending law school in Paris, he met a woman who returned his affections, but her family didn't like him, and married her off to another man. This was to become another recurring theme in Verne's work: Women married against their will, including Aouda in Around the World In Eighty Days.

In 1849, he met Alexandre Dumas, already the author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, and became a close friend of his son, Alexandre Dumas fils, already the author of The Lady of the Camellias, which would be adapted into the opera La Traviata and the Greta Garbo film Camille. Verne helped Dumas fils write a play, The Broken Straws, which played to some success in 1850.

Verne abandoned his legal career for a literary one, spending the 1850s writing short stories and comic operas. In 1857, he married Honorine Morel, a widow with 2 small children. His only natural child, Michel Verne, was born in 1861.

The term "science fiction" was coined in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. In the 1st issue of his magazine, Amazing Stories, he wrote, "By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story -- a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision."

Verne himself used the terms "Roman de la Science" (novel of science) and "Voyages extraordinaires" (extraordinary voyages). These began with Five Weeks in a Balloon in 1863, and would also include Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864, and From the Earth to the Moon in 1865.

Not only did From the Earth to the Moon inspire the 1st science fiction film, A Trip to the Moon in 1902, but it correctly predicted both that America would be the 1st nation to put people on the Moon, and it came very close to predicting the time the trip would take: He said 97 hours and 20 minutes, a little over 4 full days; from liftoff to Neil Armstrong's message of, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed," Apollo 11 took 102 hours and 45 minutes. Telling his tale 104 years before it could become reality, Verne under-estimated the time by only 5 hours and 25 minutes.

In 1870, Verne published Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, creating the character of Captain Nemo, and predicting the production of submarines. In 1871, he published A Floating City. And he was just getting warmed up.

In 1869, the Suez Canal was built across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, and thus with the Indian Ocean. No longer would ships from Europe have to travel all the way around Africa to reach the Middle East, India, the Far East, and Australia. That same year, the transcontinental railroad opened in America. No longer would travelers have to board ships steaming all the way around South America to get from America's Atlantic Coast to its Pacific Coast. In 1870, a rail line connected the Indian cities of Bombay and Calcutta (now known as Mumbai and Kolkata, the names officially changed in 1995 and 2001, respectively).

A magazine article suggested that, with these 3 advances, it would now be possible to go around the world in 80 days -- less than 3 months, also less than 12 weeks. The existing record was much longer: 394 days, by James Iredell Waddell, from October 8, 1864 to November 6, 1865. It was the end of the Age of Exploration, and the beginning of an era when, given enough money and enough time, anyone could travel pretty much anywhere they wanted.

Verne imagined Phileas Fogg, a Londoner of some means (how he made his money is never told in the original novel), who mentions the 80-day possibility to his fellow members of the Reform Club. They bet him that he can't do it. The wager is £20,000 -- in today's money, about £2.5 million; or, with the current exchange rate, a little over $3 million.

Fogg was very well off, but £20,000 was half his fortune, and he withdrew the other half from the bank to cover his expenses: If he lost the wager, he would be "ruined." But, as a "gentleman," having been challenged by his fellow "gentlemen," if he refused the challenge, he would be considered a "coward." And worse than the ruin of his finances would be the ruin of his reputation: Were he to be bankrupt, his friends would still consider him a man of honor, and help him out. But he could not refuse, in spite of the many dangers abroad.

He leaves the Reform Club at 8:45 PM on October 2, 1872, with a deadline of the same time of night on December 21. He is accompanied by his French valet, Jean Passepartout, who, as originally written, is a virtual copy of Conseil, the Flemish (Belgian) servant of Professor Pierre Aronnax, the natural scientist who narrated Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Fogg's original itinerary:

* Days 1 to 7: London to Dover by rail; ferry across the English Channel to Calais, France; rail to Brindisi, Italy; steamer across the Mediterranean to Suez.

* Days 8 to 20: Steamer across the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to Bombay.

* Days 21 to 23: Rail to Calcutta.

* Days 24 to 36: Steamer to Hong Kong.

* Days 37 to 42: Steamer to Yokohama, Japan. 

* Days 43 to 64: Steamer to San Francisco.

* Days 65 to 71: Rail to Jersey City, New Jersey, and ferry to New York.

* Days 72 to 80: Steamer to Liverpool, and then rail to London.

Spoiler alert for a novel almost a century and a half old, which has been adapted in movie form several times, most notably in a 1956 film, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, starring David Niven as Fogg: There is another traveler, a London detective named Fix, who believes Fogg matches the physical description of an unidentified bank robber, and pursues him. He's got to get Fogg, either in Egypt, India or Hong Kong, each then under British rule. If he can't do that, then he's got to get on the same conveyances (ship to Yokohama, ship across the Pacific, train across America, ship across the Atlantic), before they are both, once again, on British soil in Liverpool.

Fix promises the captain of the Egypt-to-India steamer a reward if he can reach Bombay early. He does, by 2 days. But Fogg and Passepartout get away. Good for them. Bad for them is that there is still a part of the railway unfinished. They hire an elephant driver, and, along the way, save a widow named Aouda from the ritual suicide designed, against her will, from joining her husband. All the time they have gained has been lost, but Fogg doesn't care, as he and Aouda fall in love.

Fogg and Passepartout become separated in Hong Kong, and each (Fogg with Aouda) makes his separate way to Yokohama, where they meet up, and, as does Fix, get on the ship to San Francisco. The train ride across America is interrupted by a herd of bison crossing the tracks and a Native American attack.

Upon disembarking in Liverpool, on Day 80, Fix tells Fogg, "I arrest you in the Queen's name!" (Queen Victoria.) But when he telegraphs London to tell Scotland Yard, he receives a wire back, telling him the real robber had been arrested in Edinburgh 3 days earlier. Like Lieutenant Philip Gerard with Dr. Richard Kimble on the TV show The Fugitive, 95 years hence, he now knows that the man he has been long chasing is innocent. He has to let Fogg go. Fogg comes out of St. Pancras Station in London, and discovers it is 5 minutes past his deadline.

Fogg tells Aouda that he wants to marry her, but is willing to let her go if she doesn't want to live in poverty. She agrees to marry him anyway. He sends Passepartout to find a minister who will marry them tomorrow. He returns and says the minister can't marry them tomorrow, because tomorrow is Sunday. Fogg tells him that tomorrow is Monday. Passepartout explains that they had crossed the International Date Line on the Pacific Ocean, so they gained a day: To the members of the Reform Club, today is December 21, Day 80.

Fogg rushes to the Club, and, 5 seconds before 8:45 PM, he says, "Here I am, gentlemen." He collects his winnings, and splits them with Passepartout and Fix, who had helped him (for his own reason), and marries Aouda.

The novel was a smashing success. In 1889, American journalist Nellie Bly told her editor, Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World, that she could beat the fictional record. Pulitzer forwarded her the money necessary to try. In Amiens, France, she met Verne, who doubted she could do it, but wished her luck. She did it in 72 days and 6 hours, her launching point and destination being Hoboken Terminal in New Jersey.

Verne continued to write his scientific novels, including The Mysterious Island in 1875, The Green Ray (predicting lasers) in 1882, Robur the Conqueror (with his armed airship) in 1886, The Purchase of the North Pole in 1889 (20 years before Robert Peary claimed to be the 1st person to reach the real thing), An Antarctic Mystery in 1897 (14 years before Roald Amundsen became the 1st person to reach the South Pole), The Village in the Treetops in 1901, and the Robur sequel Master of the World in 1904.

He died in 1905, in Amiens, at age 77. His son Michel, also a writer, lived until 1925. At least one great-great-grandson of Jules Verne is believed to still be alive.

In 1928, Palle Huld, a 15-year-old boy scout from Denmark, sponsored by a Danish newspaper, tried to set a new around-the-world record in commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of Verne's birth. Instead of going by India, he crossed the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Railway, which had been completed in 1904. It took him 44 days, and he published an account titled A Boy Scout Around the World. Once done, he made another trip, to Amiens, where he laid flowers at Verne's grave. Believed to be the inspiration for the character Tintin by Hergé (Georges Prosper Remi), he lived until 2010, age 98.

In 1988, attempting to follow Fogg's route and modes as closely as possible, including starting and ending at the real-life Reform Club in London, Michael Palin of the Monty Python comedy troupe did it in 79 days and 7 hours, recording his journey for the documentary Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin. The following year, another Python member, Eric Idle, played Passepartout to Pierce Brosnan's Fogg in a film version of the novel, airing on CBS. It ends with Fogg walking into the Club and nonchalantly saying, "Gentlemen, it is precisely nine o'clock. Anyone for a game of whist?" (An early form of the card game bridge.)

The current record, perhaps appropriately, is held by a pair of Frenchmen: Michel Dupont and Claude Hetru, who piloted an Air France Concorde on August 15 and 16, 1995, doing it in 31 hours, 27 minutes and 49 seconds. That's 2 hours faster than it took Charles Lindbergh to fly only across the Atlantic in 1927.

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January 30, 1873 was a Thursday. Baseball was in the off-season. Basketball didn't yet exist. Nor did organized hockey, and American football was still basically soccer. Even England's FA Cup, in only its 2nd season, was between rounds. So there were no scores on this historic day.

However, on the date that Fogg fictionally completed his trip, December 21, 1872, there was an FA Cup match. Maidenhead F.C., of Berkshire, a team now named Maidenhead United, defeated nearby Windsor Home Park (now Windsor F.C.), 1-0 in Windsor.

January 25, 1890: Nellie Bly, Around the World

January 25, 1890: Nellie Bly makes an honest man out of Jules Verne, and beats Phileas Fogg.

She was born Elizabeth Ann Cochran outside Pittsburgh in 1864. In 1885, she saw an article in the Pittsburgh Dispatch titled "What Girls Are Good For." The male author limited the subject to 2 things: Having babies and keeping house. Elizabeth wrote a letter of objection, and the paper's editor was so impressed by it, he hired her. To protect her identity, he gave her the nom de plume "Nellie Bly," after a Stephen Foster song. (The editor slightly goofed: The song was "Nelly Bly.")

She went to Mexico, to report on what life was like there. It was miserable, largely thanks to dictator Porfirio Díaz. She wrote so, and had to flee the country. But her writing got the attention of Joseph Pulitzer, and in 1887, he hired her for his newspaper, The New York World. She wrote Ten Days in a Mad-House, about how she feigned insanity to get into the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. (It was renamed Welfare Island in 1921, and Roosevelt Island for FDR in 1973.)

She became the first of the "stunt girls," women who would use sensational acts to get sensational news stories, and, in her case, not only made her famous -- but, with the inability of newspapers to really reproduce photographs, allowed her to go mostly unrecognized wherever she went -- but made the World the biggest-selling newspaper in the Western Hemisphere, at least until William Randolph Hearst bought the New York Journal, and started challenging Pulitzer, wild story for wild story.

In 1873, French author Jules Verne, already known for his tales of fantasy and science fiction, published the novel Around the World in Eighty Days. In it, he suggested that the recent building of new railroads across the United States and India, and of the Suez Canal connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, made it possible for a man to leave wherever he was in the world, go all the way around it, and return to his point of origin -- in the novel's case, a "gentlemen's club" in London -- in 80 days.

(In Victorian England, a gentlemen's club was a private social club for rich men, exclusive enough that you had to get recommended by a member to become a member. In 21st Century America, strip joints have taken to calling themselves "gentlemen's clubs." Who is kidding who?)

Going all the way around the world had first been proposed by Ferdinand Magellan, who was killed in mid-voyage, but his men completed the journey in 1522, in just under 3 years. In 1865, James Iredell Waddell did it in 13 months, or 394 days. But that was before the completion of the railroads and the canal in question.

The inspiration for the book came from an American railroad and shipping magnate, aptly named George Francis Train. In 1871, he decided to travel around the world. His actual travel time turned out to be 80 days, but was interrupted when he was arrested in Paris, for supporting the Paris Commune.

In the book, Phileas Fogg, an inventor, bets the other members of his club that he can do it. The amount: £20,000, which he estimates to be about half his fortune. It's about £2.52 million in 2022, or $3.4 million. Spoiler Alert for a story a century and a half old: He wins the bet.

In real life, by 1889, no one was known to have attempted it. So Nellie talked Pulitzer into letting her attempt it. Word got out, and Cosmopolitan magazine sent a rival reporter, Elizabeth Bisland, to beat Nellie. But while Nellie was going to go eastward, as Fogg did, Bisland headed west.

Both left on the same day: November 14, 1889. At 9:40 AM, Nellie boarded a ferry at Hoboken Terminal in New Jersey, crossing the Hudson River to Manhattan, where she boarded the German cruise liner SS Augusta Victoria. It docked in England's main westward port, Southampton. It left for France, where she boarded a train to Amiens, and met Jules Verne.

She crossed France and Italy by rail, reaching the Italian port of Brindisi. From there, she boarded a steamer that went through the Suez Canal. She boarded ships that took her to Colombo, in the British colony of Ceylon (now the independent nation of Sri Lanka), Penang (in what's now Malaysia), Singapore (where she bought a monkey), and Hong Kong.

The World organized a "Nellie Bly Guessing Match" in which readers were asked to estimate her arrival time, to the second, with the Grand Prize consisting of a trip to Europe, and spending money for the trip. There was even a "Round the World with Nellie Bly" board game.

It wasn't under December 24, Christmas Eve, when she was in Hong Kong, that Nellie found out about Bisland. "I would not race," Nellie said. "If someone else wants to do the trip in less time, that is their concern."

Nellie got to Japan, and on January 7, 1890, she boarded the British ship RMS Oceanic in Yokohama. But the Pacific weather was rough, and it took her until January 21 to get to San Francisco. Fortunately, word received Pulitzer in New York by telegram, and he chartered a private train to pick her up in Oakland once she crossed San Francisco Bay by ferry.

The Miss Nellie Bly Special roared across the continent, stopping in Chicago, and arriving back at Hoboken Terminal on January 25, 1890, at 3:51 PM. A big crowd cheered as she disembarked. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened in Hoboken. (The alleged first baseball game played there in 1846 had hardly any spectators.)

She had done it: Nellie Bly went around the world in 72 days, 6 hours and 6 minutes. Bisland missed a connection, had to take a slower ship, and was still on the Atlantic Ocean when Nellie completed her journey. She reached New York on January 30, after 77 days. She beat Phileas Fogg, but she didn't beat Nellie Bly.

Nellie was now the 2nd-most famous woman in the world, behind Britain's Queen Victoria. Her record didn't last long: George Francis Train was inspired to try again, and, before the year was out, had gone around the world in 67 days. In 1892, he cut the record to 60 days.

In 1931, Wiley Post became the 1st person to try it in an airplane, and he lowered the record to 8 days and 16 hours. In 1933, he tried again, and cut it to 7 days and 20 hours. In 1938, Howard Hughes tried it, taking 3 days and 19 hours. The current record is 31 hours, 27 minutes and 49 seconds, by Michael Dupont and Claude Hetru, flying an Air France Concorde with 98 passengers on August 15 and 16, 1995. That's 2 hours faster than it took Charles Lindbergh just to fly from New York to Paris in 1927.

Nellie Bly was 25 years old at the time of her achievement. The rest of her life couldn't help but be an anticlimax, but it was hardly wasted. She kept reporting for the World, and wrote novels. In 1895, she married for the 1st and only time, to a millionaire named Robert Seaman. She was 31, he was 73. Neither of them ever had children, together or with anyone else.

His health was already failing, and she took over his business, the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company, which made steel containers, such as milk cans and boilers. He died in 1904. Shortly thereafter, the company began making the model for the 55-gallon oil drum still in use in America today. Although the U.S. Patent Office registered Henry Wehrhahn as the inventor, it may have been Nellie herself. She did receive patents for inventing a new version of the milk can and a stacking garbage can. She was perhaps the most successful female industrialist in America.

Until she wasn't. Her husband's illness had left the company's financial affairs in disarray, and, even with her inventions, she was unable to fix it. The company went bankrupt, and she went back to reporting -- not for the New York World, whose owner Pulitzer had died in 1911, but for its rival, Hearst's New York Journal.

In 1913, she covered the Woman Suffrage Procession, titling her article "Suffragists Are Men's Superiors." She predicted that women would get the right to vote in America in 1920. She did not specify a date, but she got the year right. She also reported from the front lines in World War I.

Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, a.k.a. Nellie Bly, died on January 27, 1922, of pneumonia in New York. She was 57 years old. Her tombstone in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx bears both names, and the legend "In Honor of a Famous News Reporter."

She has been played by Anne Helm in a 1960 episode of the NBC Western Tales of Wells Fargo, Linda Purl in the 1981 NBC movie The Adventures of Nellie Bly, and Caroline Barry in the 2015 film 10 Days in a Madhouse.

She was also played by Julia Duffy on a 1983 episode of the NBC time-travel series Voyagers! The lead character, Phineas Bogg (played by Jon-Erik Hexum), was obviously named after Phileas Fogg, and he and his young companion, Jeffrey Jones (Meeno Peluce), arrive in 1889 London, and find Nellie early in her trip, wearing a deerstalker hat, which we now associate with Sherlock Holmes. They also meet Holmes' creator, Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, who's got writer's block.

Not buying Bogg's name, thinking it too close to Fogg's, she decides that Bogg is Jack the Ripper. And Jeffrey convinces Conan Doyle to use Holmes' methods to prove otherwise. They don't actually catch the Ripper, but they do catch a renegade time traveler who had attacked Nellie to mess with history. (The idea of a renegade time traveler pretending to be the Ripper would later be used in the short-lived TV version of Timecop. And, of course, the film Time After Time had already done it the other way: The Ripper is never caught because he becomes a renegade time traveler.)

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January 25, 1890 was a Saturday. Baseball and football were out of season. Hockey was still all-amateur. And basketball wouldn't be invented for nearly another 2 years. So there were no scores on this historic day.