Journalist

I was born in 1864 in a small town in Pennsylvania. I aspired to be a journalist, and I landed my first newspaper job with the Pittsburgh Dispatch. Dissatisfied with my assignments, I took the initiative and traveled to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent.
I spent nearly half a year reporting the lives and customs of the Mexican people; my dispatches were later published in book form as Six Months in Mexico.
Mexican authorities threatened me with arrest for a report I wrote critical of president Porfirio Diaz, and I left Mexico.
In 1887 I moved on to bigger things in New York City.
My first assignment for the New York City newspaper The World was an article on an insane asylum, for which I posed as a mentally ill patient and got myself committed. I spent ten days inside an asylum before my employers came to let me out. The story embarrassed New York City officials into taking action. A grand jury launched an investigation into conditions at the asylum, inviting me to assist. The jury's report recommended the changes I proposed, and its call for increased funds for care of the insane prompted an $850,000 increase in the budget of the Department of Public Charities and Corrections. My report was later published in book form as Ten Days in a Madhouse.
In 1873, French author Jules Verne had published a novel called Around the World in 80 Days. In it, a fictional hero named Phileas Fogg circles the globe on a bet. But no real person had attempted the feat. In 1889, I proposed to attempt it as a publicity stunt for The World. The paper’s business manager suggested that another reporter could do it better. My reply: "Very well. Start the man and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him." I got the assignment.
Newspaper sales skyrocketed as New Yorkers, then the rest of the country, bought copies of The World to keep track of my whereabouts. After a couple of near-disasters in catching departing steamships, I arrived back in New York in 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes — beating Phileas Fogg's time by more than a week, and setting a world record for circling the earth. Naturally, my resulting book was titled Around the World in 72 Days.
100 years ago you would have been hard pressed to find an American who hadn’t heard of me. Now few Americans know my name.
A character very much like me appeared in the 1965 Blake Edward’s movie the Great Race.