A Woman, Two Wheels, and a Wager

I recently came across a story that I found to be very interesting if not astounding. On June 25,1894 Anna Cohen Kopchovsky, a 5-foot 3-inch, 100-pound mother of three left Boston with the goal of becoming the first woman to bicycle around the world. Annie was a Jewish-Latvian immigrant married to a peddler. She helped her growing family make ends meet by selling advertising space for several newspapers.

In the 1880s, British born Thomas Stevens had become the first man to cycle around the world, a journey that took 33 months. Legend has it that two Boston businessmen bet $10,000 on whether a woman could duplicate that feat. The 23-year-old Anna seized on that nebulous story and started publicizing that she was going to take on the (alleged) challenge. She was a masterful promoter as evidenced by a crowd of over 500 gathering at the Massachusetts State House to see her start her trek. The Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company of New Hampshire’s handed Kopchovsky $100 in sponsorship money. In exchange, she hung an advertising placard on her bike and changed her surname to “Londonderry” for the journey.

The first time Annie had ridden a bike was a few days before her departure. The 42-pound bicycle was nearly half of Annie’s weight. For her world-wide trip she only packed a change of underwear and a pearl-handled revolver. Her ambitious goal was to circle the globe in fifteen months. Annie headed west but when she arrived in Chicago, she realized that would be unable to get across the Rockies during the winter. So the adventurer reversed course and headed to New York, thankfully on a much lighter bike. In NYC, she hopped on a steamer ship bound for France. Journeying across France, Annie sent telegrams to local newspapers advising them of her impending arrival. At each stop, she gave lectures and provided bicycling demonstrations. When she boarded a ship in Marseille bound for Alexandria, a drum and bugle corps played and thousands of well-wishers cheered.

Annie rode and sailed across the Mideast and Asia. She claimed that she visited Russia and North Korea and maintained that she had been briefly imprisoned in China during the Sino-Japanese War. Her final foreign destination was Japan where she boarded a San Francisco bound ship. Annie arrived in California in March 1894 and spent the next six months cycling across the U.S. On her final segment, Londonderry claimed that she was nearly killed by a runaway horse in California and broke her wrist in an encounter with a drove of pigs in Iowa. She reached her final destination, Chicago, on September 12, 1894, fourteen days ahead of schedule.

Truth and Fiction
In the 1890s, radical innovations in bicycle design transformed cycling from a somewhat perilous enterprise into a pleasurable, less hazardous and even utilitarian recreation. Bicycle sales exploded as did the popularity of the sport. Bicycles became mass produced and men increasingly used them to commute to work. Because of Annie Londonderry’s exploits. many women took up bicycling for the first time. Women’s fashions changed dramatically as ladies followed Annie’s example and abandoned their corsets and billowy skirts in favor of much more comfortable bloomers.

Annie Londonderry was a gifted storyteller and shameless self-promoter. Historians have never verified the existence of a $10,000 wager or an alleged $5,000 prize that Annie continually referenced. And was she really ever thrown into a Chinese jail or injured in a confrontation with a herd of swine? Maybe not. But what is undisputed is that she was the first woman to circumnavigate the globe on a bicycle. Annie became a symbol of freedom, and so did the bicycle itself. World-famous suffragist Susan B. Anthony declared “the bicycle has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”

Anna Cohen Kopchovsky AKA Annie Londonderry died of a stroke on Nov. 11,1947. She left behind some amazing accomplishments and a lifetime of service as an inspiration to women across the globe.

Have a great weekend summer and a wonderful summer. I’m taking the summer off from blogging. If you don’t own it already, make sure to order a copy of the ultimate beach read “Get Smarter-Be Amazed” on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.com.

See you in September.