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  Bermuda Triangle

Many people think of the Bermuda Triangle as an area where planes and ships vanish without a trace. Stories of disappearances in the Triangle are often recounted with an air of supernatural mystery. Actually, research shows that disappearances are no more common in that area of the Atlantic than in other heavily trafficked areas of ocean.

There is no official definition of the Bermuda Triangle, but its borders are often defined by imaginary lines connecting South Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Some people ascribe the name to a much broader area, a dagger shape with its easternmost point at the Azores, including the Gulf of Mexico, the waters around the West Indies, and the waters off the southeastern U.S. The area is also called the Devil’s Triangle and by other ominous names: the Twilight Zone, the Hoodoo Sea, the Limbo of the Lost, the Magic Rhombus, the Port of Missing Ships, and the Triangle of Death.

Lawrence David Kusche, who wrote the book The Bermuda Triangle Mystery—Solved, studied many of the disappearances in the area and the discrepancies between the truth and the embellished stories.

One of the Triangle’s most famous cases is the 1945 disappearance of five Navy TBM Avengers of Flight 19 and of a plane sent out to search for the missing party. Shortly before its disappearance, Flight 19’s leader radioed about his plane’s compasses malfunctioning and his resulting disorientation. (He mistook islands in the Bahamas for the Florida Keys.) The other pilots were not experienced navigators, as legend asserts, but students in training. And although the flight did begin in clear weather, retellings of the story neglect to mention that by the time the planes became lost, winds were strong and the sea was rough.

Some extreme theories concerning the Triangle involve “vile vortices” that supposedly are passages into the fourth dimension where airplanes “fall up” and UFOs appear. Although disappearances at sea are certainly tragic, the sensationalized accounts of Bermuda Triangle disappearances have given the area a notoriety far greater than it deserves.