Some great minds find cures to diseases, others invent machines to make life easier, some devise equations that give insight into how our world works. Other great minds simply feel the need to live differently and in doing so change the world by inspiring others to do the same.

A 23-year-old Jewish working-class mother did just that by bicycling around the globe. By today's standards, it's a difficult journey, but in 1894, it was unheard of. She did this in a time when women couldn't have a license to drive, own property, or vote. Even the men's riding pants she wore during her journey shocked many people used to popular Victorian dress. Annie Cohen Kopchovsky had the courage to change the path of her life, but her courageous act of independence cut a path for women around the world.

Her journey started in front of 500 friends, family, suffragists, journalists, and skeptics at the Massachusetts State House. She climbed onto a 42-pound bicycle and, as the Boston Evening Transcript described it, ". . . sailed away like a kite down Beacon Street."

According to her biography, Around the World on Two Wheels, Annie told newspapers the reason for her trip was a wager between herself and two wealthy businessmen. They bet her that she could not bicycle around the world while earning $5,000 (aside from traveling expenses) without accepting gratuity. Some argue that the "bet" was a ploy made up by Annie. She used the ensuing media frenzy to her advantage and became a skilled marketing and public relations wiz.

She creatively funded her trip and met the limitations of the bet by earning money lecturing, "celebrity appearances," finding sponsors, and essentially turning her bicycle and her trip into a billboard for businesses and causes worldwide. During her journey she became the character "Annie Londonderry." She agreed to carry a placard and take on the name from the Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company, which became the first of her many sponsors.

She was also skillful at creating stories from her adventures that increased the media's interest surrounding her journey and was known to "never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

True or not, it worked. She left a trail of newspaper stories spanning the U.S., France, Egypt, Singapore, China, Japan, and other countries. One newspaper in France said, "The intrepid traveler has quickly captivated the love of the people of Marseilles."

The New York World credited her with becoming the first woman to bicycle around the world and said her trip was, "the most extraordinary journey ever undertaken by a woman."

In 1896 suffragist Susan B. Anthony said that the bicycle did more to emancipate women than anything else in the world and "it gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance."

Just two years earlier, Annie Londonderry proved her selfreliance by circumnavigating the globe. She shed stereotypes and reinvented herself as an independent entrepreneur and a world traveler. And while her journey was a personal one, she gave many other women inspiration to follow their dreams.

After Annie Londonderry's adventures, she moved to New York where she resumed her familial duties as well as worked as a sensationalist features writer. Her first story was a tale of her travels in which she opened with "I am a journalist and a 'new woman,' if that term means that I believe I can do anything that a man can do."