7. The Bermuda Triangle’s Name came from an article in a pulp magazine
Argosy Magazine was one of the oldest pulp magazines in existence in America in 1964. Pulp magazines, collectively called “the pulps” reached their peak popularity prior to World War II. Following the war alternative forms of entertainment superseded them, and the few that survived did so by focusing on lurid crime articles, or sensationalist articles featuring the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. Argosy followed suit, presenting articles describing real crimes and police investigations, UFO sightings, and stories of encounters with aliens. In the February 1964 edition an author named Vincent Gaddis revived the story of Flight 19, claiming it was one of several mysterious and unexplained disappearances in an area of the Atlantic Ocean he dubbed the Bermuda Triangle. Gaddis described several disappearances inaccurately, and changed the location of some in order to include them in his defined area. It was the first reference to the Bermuda Triangle in print.
Gaddis established the vertices of his triangle as Miami, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the island of Bermuda. He wrote, “Within this roughly triangular area, known as the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ most of the total vanishments have occurred.” He also mentioned other vanishings near but outside the imaginary lines connecting his proposed vertices, but did not describe how far out such “nearby” vanishings extended. “This relatively limited area is the scene of disappearances that total far beyond the laws of chance”, he wrote, without explain what the laws of chance were, or how he arrived at that conclusion. Gaddis included an in-depth discussion of Flight 19, basing it largely on the fictional quotations from Allan W. Eckert’s earlier article in American Legion Magazine. Gaddis defined the triangle, gave it a catchy name, and opened the floodgates of speculation about its supernatural nature.