Surprising facts about the Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is an urban legend focused on a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The idea of the area as uniquely prone to disappearances arose in the mid-20th century, but most reputable sources dismiss the idea that there is any mystery.
The earliest suggestion of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in an article written by Edward Van Winkle Jones of The Miami Herald that was distributed by the Associated Press and appeared in various American newspapers on September 17, 1950. Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door", a short article by George X. Sand covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a group of five US Navy Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers on a training mission. Sand's article was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where the losses took place, as well as the first to suggest a supernatural element to the Flight 19 incident.
Flight 19 was covered again in the April 1962 issue of The American Legion Magazine. In it, author Allan W. Eckert wrote that the flight leader had been heard saying, "We cannot be sure of any direction ... everything is wrong ... strange ... the ocean doesn't look as it should." In February 1964, Vincent Gaddis wrote an article called "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" in Argosy saying Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region. The next year, Gaddis expanded this article into a book, Invisible Horizons.
Other writers elaborated on Gaddis' ideas: John Wallace Spencer (Limbo of the Lost, 1969, repr. 1973); Charles Berlitz (The Bermuda Triangle, 1974); Richard Winer (The Devil's Triangle, 1974), and many others, all keeping to some of the same supernatural elements.
The Gaddis Argosy article delineated the boundaries of the triangle, giving its vertices as Miami; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Bermuda. Subsequent writers did not necessarily follow this definition. Some writers gave different boundaries and vertices to the triangle, with the total area varying from 1.3 to 3.9 million km2 (0.50 to 1.51 million sq mi). "Indeed, some writers even stretch it as far as the Irish coast." Consequently, the determination of which accidents occurred inside the triangle depends on which writer reported them.