The Adriatic Sea /ˌeɪdriˈætɨk/ is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan peninsula and the Apennine Mountains from the Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extendi…
The Challenger Deep is the deepest known point in the Earth's seabed hydrosphere, with a depth of 10,898 to 10,916 m (35,755 to 35,814 ft) by direct measurement from submersibles, and slightly more by sonar bathymetry (see below). It is in the Pacif…
The Vela Incident, also known as the South Atlantic Flash, was an unidentified "double flash" of light detected by an American Vela Hotel satellite on September 22, 1979, near the Prince Edward Islands off Antarctica, which many believe was of nucle…
The Essex was an American whaleship from Nantucket, Massachusetts. The ship, captained by George Pollard, Jr., was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the southern Pacific Ocean in 1820. The crew spent months at sea before the final eight survivor…
Rogue waves (also known as freak waves, monster waves, killer waves, extreme waves, and abnormal waves) are relatively large and spontaneous ocean surface waves that occur far out at sea, and are a threat even to large ships and ocean liners.
Deepwater Horizon was an ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore oil drilling rig owned by Transocean. Built in 2001 in South Korea by Hyundai Heavy Industries, the rig was commissioned by R&B Falcon, which later became pa…
The Senkaku Islands (尖閣諸島, Senkaku-shotō, variants: 尖閣群島 Senkaku-guntō and 尖閣列島 Senkaku-rettō), also known as the Diaoyu Islands (Chinese: 钓鱼岛及其附属岛屿; pinyin: Diàoyúdǎo jí qí fùshǔ dǎoyǔ; also simply 钓鱼岛) in China or Diaoyutai Islands (Chinese: 釣魚台列嶼…
The Battle of Tsushima (Russian: Цусимское сражение, Tsusimskoye srazheniye), commonly known as the “Sea of Japan Naval Battle” (Japanese: 日本海海戦, nihonkai-kaisen) in Japan and the “Battle of Tsushima Strait”, was a major naval battle fought between …
The Arabian Sea is a region of the northern Indian Ocean bounded on the north by Pakistan and Iran, on the west by northeastern Somalia and the Arabian Peninsula, and on the east by India.
USS Langley (CV-1/AV-3) was the United States Navy's first aircraft carrier, converted in 1920 from the collier USS Jupiter (AC-3), and also the U.S. Navy's first electrically propelled ship. Conversion of another collier was planned but canceled wh…
The Sargasso Sea is a region in the gyre in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is bounded on the west by the Gulf Stream; on the north, by the North Atlantic Current; on the east, by the Canary Current; and on the south, by the North Atlanti…
The North Magnetic Pole is the point on the surface of Earth's Northern Hemisphere at which the planet's magnetic field points vertically downwards (in other words, if a magnetic compass needle is allowed to rotate about a horizontal axis, it will p…
Air Transat Flight 236 was a transatlantic flight bound for Lisbon, Portugal from Toronto, Canada that lost all power while flying over the Atlantic Ocean on August 24, 2001. The Airbus A330-243 suffered a complete power loss due to a fuel leak caus…
USS Yorktown (CV-5) was an aircraft carrier commissioned in the United States Navy from 1937 until she was sunk at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. She was named after the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 and the lead ship of the Yorktown class which wa…
A pole of inaccessibility marks a location that is the most challenging to reach owing to its remoteness from geographical features that could provide access. Often it refers to the most distant point from the coastline. The term describes a geograp…
The Tropic of Capricorn (or the Southern Tropic) is the circle of latitude that contains the subsolar point on the December (or southern) solstice. It is thus the southernmost latitude where the Sun can be directly overhead. Its northern equivalent …
The Karakoram, or Karakorum ( Sanskrit: काराकोरम्; Hindi: काराकोरम; Urdu: سلسلہ کوہ قراقرم; simplified Chinese: 喀喇昆仑山脉; traditional Chinese: 喀喇崑崙山脈; pinyin: Kālǎkūnlún Shānmài; , Kārākōram; Balti: ཁརན ཨ ཀུརམ Kharan-a-Kuram Uyghur: كاراكورم), is a …
USS Lexington (CV-2), nicknamed "Lady Lex", was an early aircraft carrier built for the United States Navy. She was the lead ship of the Lexington class; her only sister ship, Saratoga, was commissioned a month earlier. Originally designed as a batt…
The 38th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 38 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North America, and the Atlantic Ocean.
The second USS Thresher (SSN-593) was the lead boat of her class of nuclear-powered attack submarines in the United States Navy. Her loss at sea in the North Atlantic during deep-diving tests approximately 220 miles east of Boston, Massachusetts, on…
Operation Ten-Go (天號作戰 (Kyūjitai) or 天号作戦 (Shinjitai), Ten-gō Sakusen) was the last major Japanese naval operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
The Strait of Hormuz /hɔrˈmuːz/ Persian: تنگه هرمز Tangeh-ye Hormoz listen , Arabic: مَضيق هُرمُز Maḍīq Hurmuz) is a strait between the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf. It is the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean and is o…
SS Andrea Doria, pronounced [anˈdrɛa ˈdoria] an-DRE-a DOHR-ee-a, was an ocean liner for the Italian Line (Società di navigazione Italia) home ported in Genoa, Italy, most famous for her sinking in 1956, when 52 people were killed (51 from immediate …
RMS Carpathia was a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger steamship built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson.
USS America (CVA/CV-66) was one of three Kitty Hawk-class supercarriers built for the United States Navy in the 1960s. Commissioned in 1965, she spent most of her career in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, but did make three Pacific deployments servi…
USS Hornet (CV-8), the seventh ship to carry the name Hornet, was a Yorktown-class aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. During World War II in the Pacific Theater, she launched the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and participated in the Battle of Mid…
R'lyeh is a fictional lost city that first appeared in the H. P. Lovecraft short story "The Call of Cthulhu", first published in Weird Tales in June 1928. According to Lovecraft's short story, R'lyeh is a sunken city in the South Pacific and the pri…
Baker Island /ˈbeɪkər/ is an uninhabited atoll located just north of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean about 3,090 km (1,920 mi) southwest of Honolulu. The island lies almost halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
Navassa Island (/nəˈvæsə/; French: La Navasse, Haitian Creole: Lanavaz or Lavash) is a small, uninhabited and disputed island in the Caribbean Sea. It is administered as unorganized unincorporated territory of the United States, which administers it…
Jarvis Island (/ˈdʒɑrvɨs/; formerly known as Bunker Island) is an uninhabited 1 3⁄4-square-mile (4.5 km2) coral island located in the South Pacific Ocean at (0°22′S160°01′W), about halfway between Hawaii and the Cook Islands. It is an unincorporate…
Lost City is a field of hydrothermal vents in the mid-Atlantic ocean that differ significantly from the black smoker vents found in the late 1970s. The vents were discovered in December 2000 during a National Science Foundation expedition to the mid…
The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion refers to the April 20, 2010 explosion and subsequent fire on the Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU), which was owned and operated by Transocean and drilling for BP in…
The ROKS Cheonan sinking occurred on 26 March 2010, when the Cheonan, a Republic of Korea Navy ship carrying 104 personnel, sank off the country's west coast near Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 seamen.
German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was the lead ship in a class of two carriers ordered by the Kriegsmarine. She was the only aircraft carrier launched by Germany and represented part of the Kriegsmarine 's attempt to create a well-balanced oce…
The Bering Sea is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean. It comprises a deep water basin, which then rises through a narrow slope into the shallower water above the continental shelves.
United Airlines Flight 811 was an airline flight that experienced a cargo door failure in flight on February 24, 1989, after its stopover at Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii.