Just keep making the triangle bigger until it encompasses the cases you want to write about. Basically a version of the texas sharpshooter. Once the target is as big as the world, the sharpshooter can't miss. Votes: +3

The Bermuda Triangle Mystery -- Solved deconstructs not only many of the so-called "mysteries", but also points out where the Triangle promoters distort, obfuscate, and omit information.

It's just as important a book to the skeptic movement as Flim-Flam! or Demon-Haunted World. Votes: +5

Some authors would have you believe this is a Bermuda Triangle case. Really?

I've read everything available on the Mary Celeste incident but have never come across anyone claiming that it's a Bermuda Triangle case. By making this statement, you sir, are guilty of spreading unsubstantiated rumour and thus qualify as a peddler of woo woo yourself. Votes: +3

Baxter, I admit that I am not an expert on Bermuda Triangle literature. These skeptic history items are intended as a survey or overview of the topic and not a deep dive.

However, if one searches Google Books on this topic, one can find quite a number of books that mention the two together.

Admittedly, several characterize it just as I do here, as a mistaken association made by less diligent Triangle researchers. Perhaps this accusation itself is one of those things that gets repeated over and over? I don't know, it sure seems that some of those Bermuda Triangle focused books (though not the Mary Celeste focused books) want to make the association.

The book "Searching for the Bermuda Triangle" claims that the mistaken association is because a similarly named "Maria Celeste" struck a reef off Bermuda during the U.S. Civil War in 1864. That seems like a plausible source of the confusion to me. Another example of paranormal researchers not doing their homework very diligently. Votes: +2

written by Baxter de Wahl, December 07, 2011
Some authors would have you believe this is a Bermuda Triangle case. Really?

I've read everything available on the Mary Celeste incident but have never come across anyone claiming that it's a Bermuda Triangle case. By making this statement, you sir, are guilty of spreading unsubstantiated rumour and thus qualify as a peddler of woo woo yourself.

What kind of person would ask an author to actually back up his arguments? A dastardly dastard, that's who. Now just lie back and enjoy the soft gang-rape of the lowly rated comment, you dastardly dastard.

written by Andrew Wiggin, December 06, 2011
Just keep making the triangle bigger until it encompasses the cases you want to write about.

Or just keep lowering your site's standards until someone can get a mercifully short article about basically nothing published. Votes: -3

@CallerX: These essays are an outgrowth of something I do on Twitter & Facebook where I post a daily fact from Skeptic History. The idea with these posts is to take several individual daily facts and pull them together into something with a theme.

Given that goal, they are inherently limited to events and birthdays that are somehow related and occur within a week or two of when the article is published. As such, these are never going to be exhaustive historical documents - and nor are they intended to be. The hope is to offer a little slice of Skeptic History from that anniversaries that occur that month, with links that let the reader explore to find out more. That's all. Votes: +1

The book "Searching for the Bermuda Triangle" claims that the mistaken association is because a similarly named "Maria Celeste" struck a reef off Bermuda during the U.S. Civil War in 1864. That seems like a plausible source of the confusion to me. Another example of paranormal researchers not doing their homework very diligently.

Seems to me that this is the pot telling the kettle that the kettle didn't do her homework.

The Mary Celeste did indeed sink in the Caribbean.

To paraphrase Jefferson, who liked his wine and his boning, when tweets get made into articles, I tremble at the thought that God is Just.

. Votes: -3

@CallerX: No, the "Mary Celeste" did not sink at all. The "Maria Celeste" sank in the Caribbean. These are two different ships, not even of the same type. Votes: +3

And, even if it were, the Caribbean Sea, where the Mary Celeste was finally left to decay and slip into the sea [after having failed to sink after being run into a reef in an attempt scuttle it for insurance fraud and then burned], ... is not even in the *&%$#@ Bermuda Triangle.

This is why I never come to the JREF forums. Always some BS arguing about nothing going on because someone thinks they're smarter than everyone else.
Someone posts a short but interesting little article and along comes some blowhard who feels the need to chop them off at the knees so they can feel superior.
Votes: +6

Actually it was Vincent Gaddis who first coined the term "Bermuda Triangle" in an article in Argosy in 1964 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Gaddis ). Charles Berlitz picked up the football, and ran with it. Lawrence David Kusche wrote "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved" that pretty well debunks the whole thing. Votes: +1

Yes, Roberto, I mention the Gaddis article in the second sentence (though I didn't include his name). Votes: +1

Oh, but THANKS Roberto for including that link to Wikipedia! I didn't realize Vincent Gaddis' birthday was known. I'll add it to the Skeptic History database so it will show up in the iPhone app when we update it. Votes: +1

written by krelnik, December 09, 2011
@CallerX: No, the "Mary Celeste" did not sink at all. The "Maria Celeste" sank in the Caribbean. These are two different ships, not even of the same type.

I'm right, you're wrong. If you choose not to do research, you may want to consider getting an intern.

Oh FFS

Votes: -4

Oh FFS

I hope that doesn't mean intercourse intercourse excrement. I'd like to think civility still means something.

written by tankgrrl, December 09, 2011
And, even if it were, the Caribbean Sea, where the Mary Celeste was finally left to decay and slip into the sea [after having failed to sink after being run into a reef in an attempt scuttle it for insurance fraud and then burned], ... is not even in the *&%$#@ Bermuda Triangle.

Except, um, for the part where, yeah, it is.

This is why I never come to the JREF forums.

The failure of that statement speaks for itself.

Always some BS arguing about nothing going on because someone thinks they're smarter than everyone else.
Someone posts a short but interesting little article and along comes some blowhard who feels the need to chop them off at the knees so they can feel superior.

a. I don't need that to feel superior.
b. Where is that short but interesting little article you mentioned? Votes: -6

A routine United States Navy training flight on December 5, 1945 was lost with all hands possibly due to a navigational error. Like many events favored by mystery mongerers, this tragedy was just a historical footnote until a writer for Argosy Magazine wrote about it in 1964.

The more I do the author's research for him, the more this twitt.... article continues to disappoint.

"The earliest allegation of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 16, 1950 Associated Press article by Edward Van Winkle Jones.[5] Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door",[6] 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 U.S. Navy TBM Avenger bombers on a training mission. Sand's article was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where the losses took place. Flight 19 alone would be covered in the April 1962 issue of American Legion Magazine.[7] It was claimed that the flight leader had been heard saying "We are entering white water, nothing seems right. We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white." It was also claimed that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes "flew off to Mars." Sand's article was the first to suggest a supernatural element to the Flight 19 incident. Votes: -1

The Mary Celeste was found between Portugal and the Azores by the ship Dei Gratia on December 4 1872. The ship was brought into Gibralter harbour. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste

The Book The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved as the same stuff on pp, 44-48. Votes: +0

And the Wikipedia article goes into detail about the insurance fraud scheme involved when the Mary Celeste was sunk near Haiti in 1885. What an insurance fraud that didn't work has to do with the Bermuda triangle is beyond me. Votes: -1

Just saying it was sunk there. Is that not easy to understand? Votes: -1

Hi Caller X Votes: +0

Someone who should be mentioned, as he contributed considerably to the literature of the Triangle myth, is Ivan T. Sanderson, whom James Randi knew quite well. He was probably better known to the general public than some of the other authors, and I loved his books when I was a lad. He was a romancer and, to be polite, often economical with the truth, but he was an excellent and dangerously convincing writer. Votes: +0

I never saw much mystery in the whole Flight-19 story. It is usually used as the prime reason for the legend of the "Bermuda Triangle" existing.

Yet the planes did not just vanish. They were lost for hours and running low on fuel as radio traffic proves.

The commander became hopelessly spacial disoriented. He believed he was over the Keys when he was not and he started to think his compass was wrong. The more junior members of the flight followed his orders and direction. They all flew in the wrong direction and went out to sea. They were not found because it's a very big ocean.

Interestingly, one thing rarely noted is that just before the flight, the instructor requested to be relieved of the duty of flying that day. It was denied. We'll never know what it was that made him feel he wasn't in good shape to fly. Maybe he was feeling sick, maybe he had not gotten any sleep the night before, maybe he was hung over, maybe he was stressed over a personal issue or something else distracted him.

Whatever the case, he judged himself as not being in the best shape for flight that day, and tragically, he was right. Votes: +0