Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and

Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book,

all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. History is full of stories brought to us by undercover journalists, intrepid reporters who risked their life, limb, and freedom to get the ungetable scoop.

Their reporting has sparked reform and changed the world, but few can boast a career to rival

Nellie Bly.

Born in 1864 as Elizabeth Jane Cochran,

she began writing under the pen name Nellie Bly when she was just 15 years old.

Despite her obvious instincts for investigative work,

Nellie's first newspaper, the Pittsburgh Dispatch, relegated her topics they

associated with female readers. She was stuck writing about fashion, garden parties, and society gossip, which frustrated her to no end.

So at 22, she quit her job and headed to New York City.

She hoped to launch a career in writing hard-hitting articles for a serious

newspaper. Now in 1887 there were few papers as serious or respected as

Joseph Pulitzer's New York world.

Nellie managed to get a meeting with a company's managing editor,

then pitched him her idea for a piece on the immigrant experience.

The editor, though, wasn't interested in her story story but he was impressed by Nellie's

tenacity so he offered her another assignment. If she could get into the mental health

asylum on Blackwell's Island, spend a week there and then write about what she saw, he would publish the story and give her a job.

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