Urban Legends are fascinating things – they can spread across the globe like wildfire, or they can occupy a small but important place in the culture of a local community.

At Drury University in Springfield, Missouri, there’s a story that is told to explain why the University cancelled its football program many years ago.

According to Dr Bill Garvin, a popular version goes something like this:

A persistent “campus legend” here at Drury is that Drury’s football program was canceled after a student was killed playing in a game.  One common variation of the story is that a rich alumnus was so horrified by the death of the student that she gave a million dollars to the college on the condition that Drury’s football program would be shut down.

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Just to let the very few people who still visit this blog [1] know, I’ve created a Google Buzz profile on which you can take a peek at my more random mutterings. However, please be warned, these posts tend to be not only very random, but also extremely mutteringly, which isn’t even a real word.

Linkage: Murray’s Google Buzz Profile

Footnotes:

1.	Despite my inexcusable neglect of it over recent months! Seriously, it amazes me that anyone still visits…
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When you think about dangerous jobs, you probably think of someone who defuses bombs, or astronauts, or perhaps even accountants [1].

You might not, however, immediately think of dentists.

And yet, according to a popular piece of ‘common knowledge’, dentists apparently suffer a suicide rate several times higher than any other profession, making dentistry one of the most dangerous professions out there, and not just because you spend all day with your hands in the mouths of people with questionable oral hygiene.

But is there any truth to it?

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Footnotes:

1.	Obviously I’m not being completely serious here. After all, what’s dangerous about being an astronaut?
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Just a quick heads-up that Pop Culture Zoo has published an interesting interview with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, of MythBusters fame.

I guess it was inevitable that a tragedy such as the loss of Air France 447 under mysterious circumstances would spark an interest in other stories of planes and vessels that have also been lost or disappeared without explanation.

It came as no surprise, then, that a quick Google search this morning for "Air France 447 Bermuda Triangle" turned up a number of hits, including some from reputable news sources.

Of course, many of these posts and articles are simply drawing a comparison between the mystery of Air France 447′s crash and other famous aircraft losses, including those that happened within the region of the Atlantic Ocean known to us today as the Bermuda Triangle [1].

But there are other sites drawing more than a casual connection between the tragedy of Air France 447 and the shadowy forces some believe to be behind the Triangle’s history of loss and disaster.

Which left me wondering — is there anything really to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle?

Footnotes:

1.	Or, even more chillingly, as the Devil’s Triangle!
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