Bermuda Triangle

Flight 19 vanished hunting for a sea that wasn't there. The Navy's report said "cause unknown."

The name is a 1964 magazine coinage; the file predates it — Flight 19's five Avengers and their rescue plane (December 1945, 27 men, no wreckage, Navy verdict 'cause unknown'), USS Cyclops (1918, 309 men, the Navy's largest non-combat loss, no distress call). Lloyd's of London and the Coast Guard both state, correctly, that loss rates are statistically unremarkable for the traffic. The archive keeps the node for the residue the statistics smooth over — the compass anomalies (the Triangle is one of two places agonic lines run true), Columbus's own log of a rising light, and the electronic-fog testimony the insurers don't price.