The Bermuda Triangle Trivia Quiz

Answer: Puerto Rico

Getting the bearings of the area we're talking about is important! Some people have said that the Bermuda Triangle is not so much a 'triangle' but more like a 'lozenge'. All the same, the imagined corners always remain in roughly the same places. The area covers open sea and many smaller islands, such as the Florida Keys.

Answer: Berlitz

Perhaps unexpectedly, the man who popularised the Bermuda Triangle myth was actually the son of the founder of the mighty Berlitz language-guide empire! The book is an excellent read with lots of maps, charts and creepy underwater photographs, and has been reprinted several times. There is also a sequel, called 'Without A Trace', published in 1994.

Answer: Sargassum seaweed

Sargassum is a thick, brown seaweed that floats in huge banks near the Bermuda Triagle. It's also known as 'gulf weed' and 'sea holly', and is so famously impenetrable that sailors from centuries ago feared being becalmed in its grasp. The Sargasso Sea and Gulf Stream, where the weed is found, are particularly calm bodies of water, making travellers uneasy about being trapped there in the days of sail-powered boats.

Answer: 1964

This may be more recent than you expect. A writer named Vincent Gaddis first used the phrase in 'Argosy' magazine in 1964. However, the idea of an area off Florida where strange events occurred was already being put forward as early as 1952, in a publication appropriately known as 'Fate'. As well as 'Bermuda Triangle', the area also goes by the inviting name 'Devil's Triangle'.

Answer: 19

Flight 19 - five Avenger planes in all - set off to practise bombing that December, but soon became lost. Anyone acquainted with Triangle mythology will be familiar with poignant transcripts of the messages they radioed back to base. Planes from this period had no GPS systems to help them navigate, so it was slightly easier for pilots to get lost.

However, comments from Lieutenant Charles Taylor, who was leading Flight 19, seemed to indicate that his compass and other gadgets were malfunctioning in a strange manner.

Answer: Martin Mariner aeroplane

One of the two Martin Mariner planes despatched to find Flight 19 (a plane known as 'Training 49') never returned from its mission. This is one of the strangest incidents in the history of the Bermuda Triangle and it is easy to see why. Many people have tried to dismiss the disappearance of Flight 19 as misadventure, arguing that the pilots simply flew out over the Atlantic by mistake.

However, the disappearance of *another* plane - one sent out to rescue the first five - suggests that some other factor could have been at work.

Answer: Glowing 'white water'

The glowing 'white water' picked up by satellites still remains a mystery to scientists, although the phenomenon was first recorded by Columbus as he sailed through the area centuries beforehand. Another mysterious meterological condition renowned in the Bermuda Triangle is a glowing green fog, which obscures the vision of sailors and pilots as they try to navigate.

Answer: True

The Berlitz book mentioned in question 2 particularly explores this interesting idea. According to several theorists, it is possible to perceive a number of regularly-spaced areas around the world where there are cases of magnetic disturbance, missing aircraft, crewless ghost-ships and malfunctioning compasses.

The most famous of these is probably the Dragon's Triangle in Japan, which uncannily lies at the exact opposite position on the globe to the Bermuda Triangle.

Answer: Voodoo witchcraft from island natives

Some of the more far-fetched theories pertaining to the Triangle - especially those involving time-travel - seem to owe a lot to the thinking of figures such as Edgar Cayce, Arthur C. Clarke and Erik von Daniken. Personally, I don't believe that the prehistoric inhabitants of Atlantis used radioactive power sources that are now causing disruption from the sea bed! I'm also rather sceptical that compass disturbance can be attributed to crashed UFOs.

The blue hole theory (that strong currents can suck boats under the sea and wedge them in watery tunnels) seems a little more plausible, but who can say for sure? Then again, that's all part of the attraction of the Bermuda Triangle mystery.

Answer: False

Particularly after the disappearance of so many of its military personnel on 5 December 1945, the American establishment refuses to acknowledge any such mysterious area in Bermuda. If you want to find out the official view from the 'horse's mouth', you can read the report at www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq8-1.htm. Like many people, I'm personally not quite decided as to what's going on in the Bermuda Triangle, but I know for sure that it's interesting to read about! I hope you've enjoyed this quiz, and maybe learnt a little about the phenomenon too.