The area of water between Florida, Puerto Rico and Bermuda that, according to pop mythology, contains some sort of malevolent force that causes ships, planes and people to disappear, never to be seen again.
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Some have put the blame on extraterrestrial invaders capturing humans for study, on inter-dimensional vortices and even on oceanic flatulence (methane gas erupting from ocean sediments) [source: NOAA].
But the real mystery of the Bermuda Triangle is why people are still so eager to believe in it. Back in 1975, librarian and pilot Lawrence David Kusche published his investigation of the phenomena. When he actually reviewed the official reports on ships that paranormal authors had depicted as vanishing inexplicably, he found that they usually sank in bad weather or suffered explainable accidents, and that wreckage sometimes was recovered [source: Nickell].
Similarly, the U.S. Coast Guard's website notes that the service "does not recognize the existence of the so-called Bermuda Triangle as a geographic area of specific hazard to ships or planes," and says that after reviewing accidents there, nothing has been found that couldn't be explained.
For a long time, people have puzzled about one of the freakiest societal collapses in human history. Why did the Maya people abandon dozens of cities they'd built in the Yucatan peninsula in the 700s or 800s C.E., and allow what had been a highly developed civilization to turn into ruins?
Some have theorized that the Maya were probably defeated in battle by rival peoples or that the ruling class was overthrown in a peasant revolt. Others have advanced more outlandish explanations, such as an invasion by UFOs [source: Stromberg].
But in a study published in 2012, Arizona State University researchers, who analyzed archaeological data with an eye to figuring out environmental conditions in the Mayan heyday, found evidence to substantiate a theory first advocated by historian Jared Diamond in his 2005 book "Collapse."The Maya, the researchers discovered, had burned and chopped down so much of the forests that they had altered the land's ability to absorb solar radiation, which in turn made clouds and rainfall scarce. That exacerbated a naturally occurring drought, and caused erosion and soil depletion, which caused agriculture to fail. With less food available, workers were forced to leave the lowland cities to avoid starvation, and everything collapsed as a result [source: Stromberg].