While Jules Verne’s characters went “around the world in 80 days,” Nellie Bly, the pseudonym for journalist Elizabeth Cochrane, broke that record by more than a week, which is one of many reasons Google is celebrating the trailblazing reporter’s 151st birthday on Tuesday with a musical Doodle.

Bly was born in Pittsburgh on May 5, 1864, and it was a scathing “letter to the editor” to protest a misogynistic article that launched her remarkable career. Impressed by the missive’s prose, the editor for the Pittsburg Dispatch offered her a job at the paper — where Cochrane began to use the penname Nellie Bly.

She developed a reputation as a defender of the marginalized, covering slums, conditions for working girls and even getting expelled from Mexico for exposing official corruption.

In 1887, she moved to the New York World and worked under the one and only Joseph Pulitzer. Here she would reach the pinnacle of her career by writing Nellie Bly’s Book: Around the World in Seventy-Two Days. The World printed daily updates of Bly’s adventure and when she completed the final leg back from San Francisco to New York, she was saluted with brass bands and fireworks everywhere she went.

The Google Doodle features a song written by Karen O of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs and is accompanied by an animation honoring Bly as a civil rights pioneer.

Get The Brief. Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. Please enter a valid email address. Sign Up Now Check the box if you do not wish to receive promotional offers via email from TIME. You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.

Contact us at letters@time.com.