Thomas Stevens: Around the World on a 50-Inch Penny-Farthing

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Thomas Stevens was born in 1854 in Berkhamsted, England, to a laborer father and started as a grocer's apprentice. After his family's planned move to Missouri in 1868 collapsed, he crossed the Atlantic alone in 1871 and worked in the American West, spending two years at a Wyoming railroad mill before being run out of town over a kickback scheme on imported British labor, then moving to a Colorado mine. In April 1884 he left San Francisco on a black enameled 50-inch Columbia Standard high-wheeler carrying a spare shirt, socks, a raincoat that doubled as a tent and a bulldog revolver. Riding wagon ruts, canal towpaths and railroad ties, he walked the bike for about a third of the 3,700 miles and reached Boston after more than 103 days.

As a correspondent for Outing magazine he started from Liverpool in May 1885, rode across France, Germany, Austria and Hungary, swapped his revolver for a .38 Smith & Wesson in Constantinople and wintered in Tehran as a guest of the Shah. Refused entry to Siberia, he crossed into Afghanistan in 1886, was arrested and held in comfort before being sent back to Persia. He rode through India, dodged mobs in China during the Sino-French tensions and finished in Yokohama in December 1886 after about 13,500 miles. In 1888 the New York World sent him to find Henry Morton Stanley, which he did ahead of a New York Herald rival. His later claim that Indian ascetics performed real miracles wrecked his reputation, and he ended up managing the Garrick Theatre in London until his death in 1935.

• A Hungarian cyclist rode with him for a stretch though neither spoke the other's language.
• Under arrest in Afghanistan he pedaled circles around his guards to entertain them.
• His Afghan captors fed him English biscuits and kept a horse in the garden for him to admire.
• When a spooked pack horse snapped his spokes, Afghan gunsmiths made new ones.
• He hoped to title his Africa book I Found Stanley, to sit beside How I Found Livingstone.