In 2018 and again in 2024, two different women, Jenny Graham of Scotland and Lael Wilcox of the United States, were motivated for different reasons to pedal around the world on a bicycle. Graham and Wilcox both succeeded in their objective (except for the need to fly over the respective oceans) to pedal around the world. Graham traveled approximately 18,000 miles, while Wilcox reportedly traveled 18,020 miles. Their journey took 124 days, 10 hours and 50 minutes and 108 days, 12 hours and 12 minutes, respectively.

Graham and Wilcox were actually the second and third women to bicycle around the world. Who was the first, you ask? Well, a woman by the name of Annie (nee: Cohen) Kopchovsky, a Boston newspaper ad saleswoman, married with 3 children and who had a knack for promotion.

How This All Started

What instigated Annie to bicycle around the world is somewhat ambiguous. It is said that she accepted a “wager” that challenged her because a former Harvard student claimed he completed a trip around the world on a $5,000 wager. That wager was proven to be fake. Also alleged at the time was that two Boston businessmen offered a wager that no woman could bicycle around the world. For the woman that could, the payoff was $20,000. No such Boston businessmen were ever identified.

Annie likely devised most (if not all) of the rumors. Nonetheless, she accepted the (alleged) challenge, contingent upon specific criteria supposedly set down as part of the wager. She announced that the feat had to be accomplished without accepting charity or any form of gratuity during the trip; she had to earn her own way around the globe; she had to do it alone; and, when on terra firma, she could only travel by bicycle.

To fund her trip, Annie obtained a sponsor. Londonderry Lithia Waters, a company in New Hampshire that sold a popular water at the time because of its CLAIMED medicinal properties because it contained lithium carbonate. Most companies that sold such water added the lithium carbonate; however, Londonderry had purchased a spring that naturally contained the compound and took full advantage of it. (The spring was a favorite water source for local Native Americans.)

One person would likely benefit from Annie’s stratagem, Colonel Albert Pope, the owner of the manufacturing company that produced Columbia Bicycles. A Columbia bicycle was delivered to Annie to start her cycling trip. It so happens that bicycle riding was becoming very popular, encouraged after an Englishman rode a “penny-furthering” around the world in 1887.

She Did it!

According to the New England Historical Society:

Kopchovsky, then about 23, launched her cycling trip from Boston’s Beacon Hill in June [1894]. Londonderry Lithia Water presented her with a $100 check. She then hung a placard bearing the company’s name on her 42-pound bicycle and pedaled away. She adopted the name Annie Londonderry for the remainder of her trip.

When the challenge was first announced, Annie’s claimed objective was to bicycle around the world in 15 months. “Annie Londonderry rode into Chicago [her starting point] on Sept. 12, 1895, 14 days ahead of schedule. She then returned to her family in Boston.” Unfortunately for Annie, her feat had lost its luster and the press was noticeably absent when she rode into Chicago.

Once again, Annie was offered a proposition by the New York Sunday World which she accepted. It was to write about her trip, so she moved her family to New York City to start a new career. According to the New England Historical Society, Annie “wrote an article for the New York Sunday World described as ‘highly suspect’.” The article opened, “I am a journalist and a new woman.”

Annie gave birth once more and then moved to California to be a saleswoman. She and her husband later returned to New York where they operated a small clothing company.

Annie died in obscurity on November 11, 1917.

Your thought are welcomed regarding Annie “Londonderry,” her life as a wife, a mother and a self-promoter.