Description
Product Description
Who doesn't love a great mystery? This book presents the eerie accidents and unexplained disappearances that have occurred in the region known as the Bermuda Triangle.
Even before it was named, the Bermuda Triangle--roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico--had gained a mythic reputation. The Bermuda Triangle became famous for making boats and ships vanish, and for snatching planes right out of the sky. But are these stories true? And if they are true, is there a more sensible reason that refutes the bad karma of the region? With so many mystifying events to learn about, readers will love disappearing into this story.
About the Author
Megan Stine has written several books for young readers, including
Where Is the White House?,
Who Was Marie Curie?,
Who Was Ulysses S. Grant?,
Who Is Michelle Obama?, and
Where Is Machu Picchu? She lives in Clinton, Connecticut.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Where Is the Bermuda Triangle?
On a beautiful sunny afternoon in 1945, five airplanes took off from a runway in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The planes were US Navy bombers, but they weren’t going to drop bombs. They were just out on a training run. The pilots were supposed to fly east, over the ocean, and then go north for a while before heading back home. The whole flight was supposed to last only two hours. The trip was called Flight 19.
But somehow, the pilots got lost and confused. They didn’t know which way to go. The officer in charge had two compasses to show him directions. But
both stopped working. He tried to contact the control tower for help, but his radio wasn’t working well. Then another pilot flying nearby heard they were lost. He offered to come help, but the officer told him
not to.
Before the day was over, all five planes had disappeared without a trace! The navy quickly sent another plane out to search for them—and it vanished, too!
How could this possibly happen? How could six planes and twenty-seven men vanish into thin air, never having sent an emergency signal? All the planes had life rafts on board. If the pilots had to land their planes in the ocean, wouldn’t at least some of the pilots have survived?
For weeks, the navy searched a wide area of the sea. They never found a single thing—not even a piece of a broken plane floating in the water. Even now, more than seventy years later, the story makes people wonder whether there is something strange and unusual about the area the planes were flying through.
In fact, it is just one of the stories about the Bermuda Triangle—the name given to a triangular area in the ocean, off the coast of Florida, where dozens of ships and planes have disappeared.
Some stories say the Bermuda Triangle sucks ships into the sea. Others say that planes can enter the Bermuda Triangle but never escape. Over the years, ships have been found floating in the water—abandoned ships in perfect condition, with food still cooking on the stove, but no people on board! Huge oceangoing ships have been said to break in half in the treacherous seas. One year, at Christmastime, two men went out on a boat only a mile from the Florida coast. They wanted to gaze at the Christmas lights back on shore. They hit something in the water and called the Coast Guard for help. But when the Coast Guard arrived twenty minutes later, they had vanished. They were never seen or heard from again. To add to the spookiness of this story, their boat was called the
Witchcraft.
This is the story of the mysterious area known as the Bermuda Triangle—who vanished, how they disappeared, and why.
Chapter 1: The Deadly Triangle
Where, exactly, is the dangerous area of water that—according to stories—has been the cause of so much tragedy? Draw three lines on a map connecting Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Miami, Florida. The lines will make a triangle in the ocean. That’s the location of the Bermuda Triangle