I knew little about the history of the speed record to make it around the globe, until I saw this headline, and figured it was time to dive in.

It starts simply enough. Two Americans are going to try to circle the globe faster than anyone ever has. Seems simple enough. But then I got curious to see if they made it. When they made it. And that search proved that there was much more to this story than just two guys who did or did not break a world record.

Let me show you what I mean.

The record sitting out there, taunting everyone, had been set in 1913 by a New York Sun reporter named John Henry Mears. Thirty-five days, twenty-one hours, thirty-five minutes. It had survived the war, the chaos of the early 1920s, and more than a decade of increasingly fast transportation. Nobody had touched it.

That sidebar is worth pausing on. The paper printed the full lineage right there, going all the way back to Jules Verne's fictional Phileas Fogg at 80 days, then Nellie Bly at 72, then the steady march of reporters and adventurers chipping away at the number every few years. By 1926 the record had been cut roughly in half from where Fogg started — fictional or not.

The two men who thought they could cut it further were John Goldstrom, an aviation writer who'd been covering flight since he hopped a plane with Glenn Curtiss back in 1909, and Morris Titterington, an aeronautic engineer who'd spent years studying European air routes and had something very interesting up his sleeve — more on that in a minute.

Their route was genuinely audacious.

New York to Plymouth by steamship. Plymouth to Berlin by Lufthansa plane the same day. Berlin to Moscow by plane the next morning. Moscow to Peking across Siberia — by plane if possible, by Trans-Siberian Railway if not. Peking to Yokohama by plane. Yokohama to Vancouver by steamship. Then a dead sprint by air across America. Vancouver to Seattle, Seattle to Elko, Elko to Chicago, Chicago to New York.

They had to be back at a North River dock in Manhattan before 10:35pm on June 24th.

Goldstrom had it figured to the minute. If everything went perfectly, he believed he could do it in 31 days. The paper noted that if he arrived in Yokohama by June 7th, the steamship President Madison would be waiting — the fastest ship on the Pacific — and that alone would give him a fighting chance.

Titterington's role was more than just travel companion. The paper described him as the inventor of the earth inductor compass — a navigation instrument he'd developed for use in aircraft. He wanted to test how different compasses performed at different points on the globe under actual travel conditions. This trip, for him, was also a scientific experiment.

Then, at the last minute, he couldn't go.

The papers described it as "press of business." No further explanation. Goldstrom boarded the Aquitania alone, with one handbag, at 1am on May 19th.

While Goldstrom crossed the Atlantic, newspapers tracked him with the kind of breathless attention usually reserved for prizefights. The Albuquerque Journal ran a full piece noting that even as Goldstrom raced eastward, a wealthy Detroit businessman named E.S. Evans and an aviator named Linton Wells were already planning to go the opposite direction and beat him in 27 days.

That photo was my favorite. John Henry Mears — the man whose record Goldstrom was trying to break — is right there shaking his hand before he left, wishing him luck. There's something very sporting and very 1920s about that we’ve seen before (go read our story about Lillian Cannon, the ultimate sportswoman).

Meanwhile, back in Toronto, Goldstrom's wife was visiting her sister near Mimico — cheerfully telling the Toronto Star she expected her husband home in about a week, that he'd "probably get a lot done in the ten days on the President Madison," and that she was entirely confident he'd break the record.

She had no idea it was already falling apart.

Germany cost him 24 hours. Fog. Unavoidable, but devastating on a schedule built to the minute. He pushed through to Siberia, but the Trans-Siberian Railway, which the paper had warned could be a problem, ground his momentum to a crawl. By the time he reached Yokohama, the President Madison had sailed.

The one ship that could have saved him, was gone.

He waited for the next available crossing, arrived in Victoria, British Columbia on June 28th, and boarded a mail seaplane piloted by Eddie Hubbard to get to Seattle. A reporter caught him on the way out.

His quote: "Better luck next time."

He wasn't devastated. He was already planning. He told the reporter he intended to go back to New York, rest, and make another attempt the following year — this time in 21 days. He'd figured out exactly where he'd lost the time and exactly how to get it back. If the President Madison had been waiting in Yokohama the day he arrived, he said, he would have broken the record that very trip.

He finished the journey anyway. Set a few minor records on individual legs. Arrived home having circled the globe. It just wasn’t fast enough.

A Kentucky paper ran a dry little editorial about it that made me laugh out loud.

My favorite part: "But how our grandchildren will laugh at such a snail's pace. For they will see great airships crossing oceans, mountains and deserts, and think as little of it as we do of the sight of a mail plane overhead."

That’s us! Andvery word of it came true.