For all intents and purposes, Nellie Bly never existed.
Yes, an intrepid female reporter went undercover in the late 1800s in an insane asylum and traveled the world in a record-breaking 72 days, but her real name was Elizabeth Jane Cochran, and she was born on May 5, 1864.
As for the name Nellie Bly? It was a pen name she picked up as a young reporter for the Pittsburgh Dispatch.
Back then, it was common practice for female reporters to use nom de plumes. Of course, Nellie Bly was anything but common, a sentiment honored by Google on Tuesday with an animated Doodle featuring an original tune by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
"Someone's got to stand up and tell them what a girl is good for," sings Karen O, words that define Bly's career and the challenges young women still face today.
"I never wept in my life, but I came very near having a good cry when I bade my mother goodbye," Bly wrote on Nov. 14, 1889, as she set off on her globe-trotting trip. The World: Evening Edition newspaper noted Bly would "put a girdle 'round the Earth, and will see all climates and peoples ere she returns."
"We love her adventurous spirit, and we share her belief that women can do anything and be anything they want (we like to think if she were around today she’d be a fellow fan of trailblazing women like Ada [Lovelace], Anita [Borg] and Ann [Makosinski])," wrote Liat Ben-Rafael, program manager for Google Doodles in a blog post announcing the doodle.
Bly's tale of global daring and social activism surely inspired a legion of female -- and male, for that matter -- reporters, and remind us that women's rights, glass ceilings and female empowerment are not 20th, or even 21st century, inventions.