What is the Bermuda Triangle?
The Bermuda Triangle is the name for a triangular area of the Atlantic Ocean connecting the tip of the Florida Peninsula, Bermuda and Puerto Rico. Ships and planes were said to vanish here without a trace unusually often, and it became known around the world as the “Devil’s Triangle.”
Famous disappearances and the boom
The most famous case is the disappearance in December 1945 of five U.S. Navy torpedo bombers on a training flight (Flight 19), followed by the loss of a flying boat sent to search for them. In 1964, the writer Vincent Gaddis gathered the area’s accidents in a magazine article and called it the “Bermuda Triangle,” and in 1974 Charles Berlitz’s book The Bermuda Triangle became a bestseller, setting off a boom. Many causes were proposed, such as holes into another dimension, UFOs and the ruins of Atlantis.
Has the mystery been solved?
In 1975, a librarian re-examined the records of the time and showed that many of the reported cases were losses in storms, actually happened in other waters, or could not be confirmed in any record at all. The area has very heavy ship and air traffic, as well as storms, sudden weather changes and strong currents, so accidents do happen, but they are not thought to be especially frequent compared with other waters.
