Apparently, when Verne wrote the novel, the steamship entrepreneur George Francis Train had actually gone around the world in 80 days plus an extended stopover in France. Fogg's trip was definitely feasible--after Verne's book came out, inspired by it, Nellie Bly, Elizabeth Bisland and Train all managed to do it in less than 80 days.
I was talking with my daughter about how long this trip would take today, and it occurred to me that my wife has done the modern equivalent if you add her two business trips to Singapore together (one through Hong Kong, the other through London), even hitting some of the same stops as Phileas Fogg. You could do it using widely available commercial transit in two days, and it would be pretty easy to make it in three. There is the question of whether air trips that go essentially over the North Pole count. Of course, the fastest human circumnavigations are done by astronauts many times a day in about 90 minutes.
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Date: 2021-11-07 09:01 pm (UTC)I was talking with my daughter about how long this trip would take today, and it occurred to me that my wife has done the modern equivalent if you add her two business trips to Singapore together (one through Hong Kong, the other through London), even hitting some of the same stops as Phileas Fogg. You could do it using widely available commercial transit in two days, and it would be pretty easy to make it in three. There is the question of whether air trips that go essentially over the North Pole count. Of course, the fastest human circumnavigations are done by astronauts many times a day in about 90 minutes.