Flerovium, with the expected magic 114 protons, was first synthesized in 1998 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, by a group of physicists led by Yuri Oganessian. A single atom of element 114 was detected, with a lifetime of 30.4 seconds, and its decay products had half-lives measurable in minutes. Because the produced nuclei underwent alpha decay rather than fission, and the half-lives were several orders of magnitude longer than those previously predicted or observed for superheavy elements, this event was seen as a "textbook example" of a decay chain characteristic of the island of stability, providing strong evidence for the existence of the island of stability in this region. Even though the original 1998 chain was not observed again, and its assignment remains uncertain, further successful experiments in the next two decades led to the discovery of all elements up to oganesson, whose half-lives were found to exceed initially predicted values; these decay properties further support the presence of the island of stability. However, a 2021 study on the decay chains of flerovium isotopes suggests that there is no strong stabilizing effect from Z = 114 in the region of known nuclei (N = 174), and that extra stability would be predominantly a consequence of the neutron shell closure. Although known nuclei still fall several neutrons short of N = 184 where maximum stability is expected (the most neutron-rich confirmed nuclei, Lv and Ts, only reach N = 177), and the exact location of the center of the island remains unknown, the trend of increasing stability closer to N = 184 has been demonstrated. For example, the isotope Cn, with eight more neutrons than Cn, has a half-life almost five orders of magnitude longer. This trend is expected to continue into unknown heavier isotopes in the vicinity of the shell closure.