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Jan 4, 2024 · The Bermuda Triangle has been the site of a number of high-profile and still-mysterious naval and aviation disappearances. But that those disasters are the result of anything sinister, as opposed to the logical conjunction of environment and statistics, is extremely doubtful. Still, a number of people have proposed scientifically valid ...
- Nathaniel Scharping
May 26, 2024 · Some aspects that help explain the number of accidents in this region are rainfall, wind speed and the presence of strong sea currents. There are numerous factors that can cause accidents in the Bermuda Triangle. Some of them are difficult to predict and can make navigation difficult. The appearance of intense fogs and sea storms, climatic ...
- Trending And Science News Editor
May 9, 2023 · A Scientist Says He's Solved the Bermuda Triangle, Just Like That. Pretty simple, actually. An Australian scientist says probabilities are the leading cause of the Bermuda Triangle disappearances ...
- Journalist
- 13 min
- Legend of the Bermuda Triangle
- Bermuda Triangle Theories and Counter-Theories
- HISTORY Vault
The area referred to as the Bermuda Triangle, or Devil’s Triangle, covers about 500,000 square miles of ocean off the southeastern tip of Florida. When Christopher Columbus sailed through the area on his first voyage to the New World, he reported that a great flame of fire (probably a meteor) crashed into the sea one night and that a strange light appeared in the distance a few weeks later. He also wrote about erratic compass readings, perhaps because at that time a sliver of the Bermuda Triangle was one of the few places on Earth where true north and magnetic north lined up.
Did you know? After gaining widespread fame as the first person to sail solo around the globe, Joshua Slocum disappeared on a 1909 voyage from Martha’s Vineyard to South America. Though it’s unclear exactly what happened, many sources later attributed his death to the Bermuda Triangle.
William Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest,” which some scholars claim was based on a real-life Bermuda shipwreck, may have enhanced the area’s aura of mystery. Nonetheless, reports of unexplained disappearances did not really capture the public’s attention until the 20th century.
An especially infamous tragedy occurred in March 1918 when the USS Cyclops, a 542-foot-long Navy cargo ship with over 300 men and 10,000 tons of manganese ore onboard, sank somewhere between Barbados and the Chesapeake Bay. The Cyclops never sent out an SOS distress call despite being equipped to do so, and an extensive search found no wreckage. “Only God and the sea know what happened to the great ship,” U.S. President Woodrow Wilson later said. In 1941 two of the Cyclops’ sister ships similarly vanished without a trace along nearly the same route.
By the time author Vincent Gaddis coined the phrase “Bermuda Triangle” in a 1964 magazine article, additional mysterious accidents had occurred in the area, including three passenger planes that went down despite having just sent “all’s well” messages. Charles Berlitz, whose grandfather founded the Berlitz language schools, stoked the legend even further in 1974 with a sensational bestseller about the legend.
Since then, scores of fellow paranormal writers have blamed the triangle’s supposed lethalness on everything from aliens, Atlantis and sea monsters to time warps and reverse gravity fields, whereas more scientifically minded theorists have pointed to magnetic anomalies, waterspouts or huge eruptions of methane gas from the ocean floor.
In all probability, however, there is no single theory that solves the mystery. As one skeptic put it, trying to find a common cause for every Bermuda Triangle disappearance is no more logical than trying to find a common cause for every automobile accident in Arizona.
Moreover, although storms, reefs and the Gulf Stream can cause navigational challenges there, maritime insurance leader Lloyd’s of London does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an especially hazardous place. Neither does the U.S. Coast Guard, which says: “In a review of many aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the years, there has been nothing discovered that would indicate that casualties were the result of anything other than physical causes. No extraordinary factors have ever been identified.”
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Aug 13, 2018 · But it wasn’t until a series of tragedies occurred in the 1940s that the general American tradition of maritime ghost stories found a resonant focal point in the Bermuda Triangle. USS Cyclops, 1911.
- Becky Ferreira
May 8, 2023 · A shipwreck sits off the coast of Bermuda's shore. On a sunny day nearly 80 years ago, five Navy planes took off from their base in Florida on a routine training mission, known as Flight 19 ...
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Aug 2, 2018 · But now scientists have come up with a new theory about the Bermuda Triangle that might explain why so many boats disappear in the area. According to History.com, the Bermuda Triangle is "a ...
