30 January: Around the World in 80 Days

On this date in 1873 Around the World in 80 Days was published. 10 things you might not know about this book:

1. The book is set in the year 1872.

2. It’s about a man named Phileas Fogg, who made a bet with his friends at the Reform Club in London that he could circumnavigate the globe in eighty days or less, or he’ll pay them £20,000. The book tells the story of how he does it, along with his his newly employed French Valet Passepartout.

3. Illustrations connected to the novel often picture Hot air balloons, but Fogg and Passepartout never actually use one. They consider it at one point, but decide against it. The association with balloons dates from the 1956 film starring David Niven. That said, Jules Verne did write about people travelling in a balloon in another book, Five Weeks In A Balloon, which was published in 1863.

4. The story first appeared as a serial in a French Newspaper, Le Temps, before it was published as a book. The serial was synchronised with the dates of Fogg’s journey. Although on the date Fogg was due to return to London there wasn’t an instalment, the final chapters, announcing his success, appeared on 22 December 1872.

5. Some of the paper’s readers at the time believed the journey was actually taking place and made bets themselves on whether Fogg would succeed.

6. In the book, Fogg thinks it’s a day later than it actually is because he’s forgotten to subtract a day on crossing what is now the International Dateline. However, this is a bit of a plot hole, because, even though the Dateline didn’t yet exist, it would have been obvious when he landed in San Francisco on what he thought was a Sunday and found the streets rather busier than you’d expect on the Sabbath, and the train timetables would have given it away, too.

7. A man called George Francis Train may have been Verne’s inspiration as he had travelled around the world in 80 days for real in 1870. He’d even done some of the things Fogg did, such as hiring a private train and being imprisoned. Train once said, "Verne stole my thunder. I'm Phileas Fogg."

8. On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly set sail to beat the fictional record set by Jules Verne in his novel, Around The World In Eighty Days. She managed it in 72, and wrote a best selling book of her own, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days.

9. There’s a prize, called the Jules Verne Trophy, which is awarded to yacht crews which break the world record for circumnavigating the globe. The current record is 45 days, 13 hours, 42 minutes and 53 seconds. Each time the record is broken, a ceremony is held in which the old record holder hands the Jules Verne Trophy to the new winner.

10. In film and TV, actors who have portrayed Phileas Fogg include David Niven, Steve Coogan, Pierce Brosnan and David Tennant.