The Bermuda Triangle
A patch of ocean with a spooky reputation - and unremarkable accident statistics.
Ships and planes do vanish in the Bermuda Triangle - at roughly the rate you’d expect for any equally busy, storm-prone stretch of ocean. The "mystery zone" was largely assembled by mid-century magazine writers who collected incidents and trimmed the boring explanations. It’s the best teaching case for how a mystery can be manufactured by selection.
Where this thought can lead
- ↳ Media literacy: brakes for the brainThe Triangle was assembled by writers who kept the vanishings and trimmed the weather reports. Watching it being built is a media-literacy course in one case study.
- ↳ Eclipses used to end battlesSailors blamed the sky long before magazines blamed the Triangle. Dangerous, unexplainable places have always grown explanations.
- ↳ Atlantis: the city that probably never wasTriangle lore loves to borrow Atlantis. One manufactured mystery citing another is itself worth noticing.
- ↳ Evidence standards: how to weigh a wild claimLloyds of London checked: the Triangle is not unusually dangerous, and they don’t charge extra to cross it. Follow the people with money on the line.
- The Bermuda Triangle keeps the historical evidence in view; Mothman: the omen of Point Pleasant changes the example while preserving the useful thread.
- ↳ The Silver Bridge collapseThe Bermuda Triangle turns the trail toward a consequence; The Silver Bridge collapse changes the example while preserving the useful thread.