Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vohlabamb here. It's hard to imagine now, but there
Speaker 1: was a time when riding a bicycle was deemed unsafe
Speaker 1: and unladylike. The safety issue had some merit. Early versions
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds had features like no pedals and
Speaker 1: leather tires, but in the eighteen eighties the Safety Bike
Speaker 1: rolled onto the scene and changed everything. Unlike previous iterations,
Speaker 1: the Safety featured two similar sized wheels, a chain and gears,
Speaker 1: and as the name implied, the Safety provided a safer,
Speaker 1: more stable ride, and at that point women began riding
Speaker 1: more often, despite doctor's warnings that they'd strained themselves in
Speaker 1: moral panic that they might down indecent for the time
Speaker 1: kneelink bloomers instead of full length skirts. One such woman
Speaker 1: was Annie Cohen Kopchowski, also known as Annie Londonderry, who
Speaker 1: at age twenty three, displayed a remarkable amount of kutzpa, moxie,
Speaker 1: and good old perseverance when she set out on an
Speaker 1: around the world cycling adventure. Annie Cohen was born in
Speaker 1: Lafia in eighteen seventy, before her family emigrated to the
Speaker 1: United States and settled in the West End of Boston
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy five. She married one Max Koupschowski in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, who, funnily enough made his business as
Speaker 1: a peddler get it a peddler anyway. They had three
Speaker 1: children by eighteen ninety two, all under the age of six.
Speaker 1: At this point, millions of men and women both had
Speaker 1: taken up cycling, but not Annie. For the article of
Speaker 1: this episode is based on How Stuffworks. Spoke by email
Speaker 1: with Peter Zeitlin, her great grand nephew and the author
Speaker 1: of a historical fiction novel and a nonfiction book about
Speaker 1: his famous ancestor. He explained she was a working mother
Speaker 1: of three small children, which left little time for a
Speaker 1: hobby such as cycling. The family lived in a tenement flat,
Speaker 1: and in addition to running a busy household, Kopschowsky sold
Speaker 1: advertising for several Boston newspapers. She was, by all accounts
Speaker 1: good at her job, but out of necessity she had
Speaker 1: developed the art of the hustle. She had no doubt
Speaker 1: heard of Thomas Stevens, the British Man who was the
Speaker 1: first person to cycle across the US and the world
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty four, and she certainly would have read
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighty nine chronicle of intrepid journalist Nelly Bly,
Speaker 1: who set out to beat the world record of Jules
Speaker 1: Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg, circumnavigating the globe in eighty days,
Speaker 1: which Bli did, finishing in just seventy two. But back
Speaker 1: to Kopchowski. She decided in February of eighteen ninety four
Speaker 1: that she would make an attempt to become the first
Speaker 1: woman to bicycle around the world, despite being a complete
Speaker 1: novice with only two or maybe three riding lessons under
Speaker 1: her belt at the time. Zeuitlin wrote in his nonfiction
Speaker 1: book the bicycle represented to Annie a literal vehicle to
Speaker 1: the fame, freedom, and material wealth she so craved. Her
Speaker 1: proposed journey could provide the opportunity to refashion her identity
Speaker 1: and create a new life for herself. So on June
Speaker 1: twenty fifth of eighteen ninety four, she announced to a
Speaker 1: crowd of supporters that she was leaving, telling them she
Speaker 1: was making the trip to settle a bet between two
Speaker 1: wealthy Boston merchants that no woman could travel around the
Speaker 1: world by bicycle. She would cycle around the world in
Speaker 1: fifteen months without any money, with only the clothes on
Speaker 1: her back, She would not only have to earn her way,
Speaker 1: but also return with five thousand dollars in her pocket
Speaker 1: in order to win the bet, and ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to boot Zeitlin said there remains a lot of mystery
Speaker 1: surrounding the origins of her trip, including whether it might
Speaker 1: have been part of a marketing scheme for Columbia Bicycles,
Speaker 1: but she earned money as she went in several ways.
Speaker 1: She sold space on her clothing and her bike to advertisers.
Speaker 1: She pioneered sports related marketing for women, including her namesake sponsor,
Speaker 1: the London Dairy Lithia Springs Water Company of New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: The company paid one hundred dollars to finance the journey.
Speaker 1: As her fame grew, she was able to sell souvenir
Speaker 1: photos of herself and her autograph, and gave lectures about
Speaker 1: her travels, at which an admission view was charged. She
Speaker 1: also sometimes made guest appearances with her bike in stores
Speaker 1: along the way to attract customers, for which she was
Speaker 1: also paid. Early in her travels, Kopchowski was dubbed Annie
Speaker 1: Londonderry after her sponsor, which was probably as much a
Speaker 1: public relations move as anything else. But the journey was
Speaker 1: not without trouble. She wasted time early in the trip,
Speaker 1: spending a full month in New York City, ostensibly in
Speaker 1: the name of publicity. The bicycle itself slowed her down,
Speaker 1: weighing forty two pounds that's nineteen kilos, the bike was
Speaker 1: not built for speed. Once in Chicago, she switched to
Speaker 1: a men's sterling model, weighinged as twenty one pounds or
Speaker 1: nine and a half kilos. Even with this improvement, her
Speaker 1: road conditions were often rugged. Frustrated by her original riding
Speaker 1: costume of a split skirt suit with bloomers underneath, at
Speaker 1: the time she reached Chicago, she shed the skirt for
Speaker 1: riding bloomers only, and eventually donned men's suits for the
Speaker 1: remainder of her trip. Scandalous Interestingly, Kopchowsky only made it
Speaker 1: as far west as Chicago because she realized that at
Speaker 1: the pace she was riding, should never make her goal. Instead,
Speaker 1: she hopped on her new lighter bike and rode back
Speaker 1: to New York, where she caught a boat to France
Speaker 1: and continued via bicycle, train and boat to finish the journey,
Speaker 1: She logged thousands of miles on her bicycle, riding through France,
Speaker 1: North Africa, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Sigone, and Hong Kong before
Speaker 1: hopping another steamer for San Francisco and riding from there
Speaker 1: back to Chicago. She didn't always divulge that information, however,
Speaker 1: She told more than a few tall tales, often embellishing
Speaker 1: her speeches and interviews with adventures of hunting tigers, dodging bullets,
Speaker 1: or being waylaid by robbers. Zeitlin said Annie was a
Speaker 1: showwoman at heart and a gifted racin tour. She set
Speaker 1: out to make a sensation of herself and had a
Speaker 1: keen sense of how to build her fame. If that
Speaker 1: meant stretching the truth to make herself more quotable to
Speaker 1: a reporter or more entertaining to an audience, she had
Speaker 1: no qualms about doing that. Fame was her fuel, and
Speaker 1: the more famous she became, the easier it was to
Speaker 1: earn the money she needed to keep going. The press
Speaker 1: was sometimes merciless about her choice of dress and her
Speaker 1: gall and choice to leave her family in the first place,
Speaker 1: but the public loved her, and cycling clubs around the
Speaker 1: world joined her at various points during her ride. Koptchowski
Speaker 1: finished the journey on Thursday, September twelfth of eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: five in Chicago, fourteen days ahead of schedule, as she
Speaker 1: claimed to have received the ten thousand dollars, but in
Speaker 1: a more recent New York Times obituary, it appears she
Speaker 1: never received the money from the wager, and in his reporting,
Speaker 1: Zuitln determined that the wager never existed. She returned to
Speaker 1: her family and had another child in eighteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: Cycling was never an important part of her life again.
Speaker 1: She briefly left her family and lived in northern California,
Speaker 1: then returned again. She and her husband lived in the Bronx,
Speaker 1: New York, operating a small clothing business. In the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: their business was destroyed by a fire, and she used
Speaker 1: the insurance money to start another business in Manhattan. She
Speaker 1: would die of a stroke on November eleventh of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty seven, at the age of seventy seven. Kopchowski's adventure
Speaker 1: was covered by the global media at a time when
Speaker 1: women's suffrage was a prominent issue. Zeitlin said countless women
Speaker 1: would have been aware of her journey and that she
Speaker 1: was making it to prove that a woman could do
Speaker 1: what only a man had done before, circle the world
Speaker 1: by bicycle. What is widely underappreciated is how the humble
Speaker 1: bicycle transformed the lives of women around the turn of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. A few months after Kopchowski's journey, Susan B.
Speaker 1: Anthony told an interviewer that quote, bicycling has done more
Speaker 1: to emancipaid women than anything in the world. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article Annie Londonderry Bicycle Around the
Speaker 1: World and into the record books on HowStuffWorks dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by Patti Rasmusen Breen. Stuff is production of by
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com, and it
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Quaang. Four more podcasts my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.