The idea for a Panama canal dates back to the 1513 discovery of the isthmus by Vasco Nez de

Balboa. The narrow land bridge between North and South America houses the Panama Canal, a
water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The earliest Central American European
colonists recognized this potential, and several proposals for such a canal were made.[1]

By the late nineteenth century, technological advances and commercial pressure allowed
construction to begin in earnest. An initial attempt by France to build a sea-level canal failed after a
great deal of excavation. This enabled the United States to complete the present canal in 1913 and
open it to shipping the following year. The state of Panama was created with its 1903 emancipation
from Colombia due to a US-backed revolt, so the US could control the canal-project area.

French canal engineer Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla influenced a change in its proposed location,
from Nicaragua (the original US choice) to Panama because of his concern about
Nicaraguan volcanism. During the late 1890s Bunaua-Varilla convinced US lawmakers to buy the
rights to build the French canal in Panama, sending each senator Nicaragua postage stamps with a
smoking volcano. In 1903, Colombia (which controlled Panama) refused to allow the United States
to build the canal. The people of Panama, with help from Bunaua-Varilla, then overthrew their
Colombian government and became independent (which made construction of the canal possible).

The Panama Canal continues to be a viable commercial venture and a vital link in world shipping.
The 2007 Panama Canal expansion project began commercial operation on 26 June 2016. The new
locks allow transit of larger Post-Panamax and New Panamax ships, which have a greater cargo
capacity than the original locks could accommodate.

The idea of a canal across Central America was revived during the early 19th century. In 1819, the
Spanish government authorized the construction of a canal and the creation of a company to build it.

Although the project stalled for some time, a number of surveys were made between 1850 and 1875.
They indicated that the two most-favorable routes were across Panama (then part of Colombia)
and Nicaragua, with a third route across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico another option. The
Nicaraguan route was surveyed.

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a loosely-defined region in the
western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have
disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Most reputable sources dismiss the idea that there is
any mystery. The vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle is one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes
in the world, with ships frequently crossing through it for ports in the Americas, Europe, and the
Caribbean islands. Cruise ships and pleasure craft regularly sail through the region, and commercial
and private aircraft routinely fly over it.

Popular culture has attributed various disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraterrestrial
beings. Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the incidents were spurious,
inaccurately reported, or embellished by later authors.
The earliest suggestion of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September
17, 1950 article published in The Miami Herald (Associated Press)[3] by Edward Van Winkle Jones.
[4]
Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door", [5][6] a short article by
George X. Sand covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a
group of five U.S. Navy Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers on a training mission. Sand's
article was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where the losses took place. Flight 19
alone would be covered again in the April 1962 issue of American Legion magazine.[7] In it,
author Allan W. Eckert wrote that the flight leader had been heard saying, "We are entering white
water, nothing seems right. We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white." He also
wrote that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes "flew off to Mars." [8] Sand's
article was the first to suggest a supernatural element to the Flight 19 incident. In the February 1964
issue of Argosy, Vincent Gaddis' article "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" argued that Flight 19 and
other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region. [1] The next year, Gaddis
expanded this article into a book, Invisible Horizons.[9]

Others would follow with their own works, elaborating on Gaddis' ideas: John Wallace Spencer
(Limbo of the Lost, 1969, repr. 1973);[10] Charles Berlitz (The Bermuda Triangle, 1974);[11] Richard
Winer (The Devil's Triangle, 1974),[12] and many others, all keeping to some of the same supernatural
elements outlined by Eckert.