This is the story of Dorothy Kilgallen's participation in a 1936 travel adventure. 2 New York journalists, Herbert Ekins of the World-Telegram and Leo Kieran of the New York Times originally were going to compete to see who could travel the world in the shortest amount of time. When the race began in September of 1936, Dorothy Kilgallen was a last minute addition to the contest. One of the advisories was that you had to use travel that was available to the general public. Ekins did not follow that rule, taking advantage of various methods that the general public would not have access to and using his influence to make sure he won the contest. DK was a "rookie" crime reporter for the Hearst paper The Evening Journal at the time. She and Kieran completed the world tour in 24 days and Ekins completed his journey in 18 days.