Around the World !!: Bermuda Triangle

The Mysterious Bermuda Triangle

Hallo Visitor, Ladies and Gentle man today we had the opportunity to write a post on this blog, and we agreed to write a post about the bermuda triangle. Well, no strings attached anymore, please enjoy ...

Introduction

The Bermuda Triangle, sometimes called the Devil's Triangle, is reputedly an area in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean. The triangle doesn't exist according to the US Navy and is not recognized by the US Board on Geographic Names.

However, a number of aircraft and surface vessels are said to have disappeared in the triangle under unknown circumstances. 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. Contrary to popular belief, insurance companies do not charge higher premiums for shipping in this area.

The Area of Triangle

Writers give different boundaries to the triangle, with the total area varying from 500,000 to 1.5 million square miles. This means that different accidents happen inside the triangle depending on which writer reports them. The first written boundaries date from a 1964 issue of pulp magazine Argosy, where the triangle's three vertices are in Miami, Florida peninsula; in San Juan, Puerto Rico; and in the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda. The United States Board on Geographic Names does not recognize this name, and it's not delimited in any map drawn by US government agencies.

The area is one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world, with ships crossing through it daily for ports in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean Islands. Cruise ships are also plentiful, and pleasure craft regularly go back and forth between Florida and the islands. It is also a heavily flown route for commercial and private aircraft heading towards Florida, the Caribbean, and South America from points north.

Bermuda Triangle Map

History

The earliest allegation of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 16, 1950 Associated Press article by Edward Van Winkle Jones. Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door",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 TBM Avenger 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 in the April 1962 issue of American Legion Magazine. It was claimed 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." It was also claimed that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes "flew off to Mars." 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's article "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" argued that Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region. The next year, Gaddis expanded this article into a book, Invisible Horizons.

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

Kusche concluded that:

The number of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantly greater, proportionally speaking, than in any other part of the ocean.
In an area frequented by tropical storms, the number of disappearances that did occur were, for the most part, neither disproportionate, unlikely, nor mysterious;
Furthermore, Berlitz and other writers would often fail to mention such storms or even represent the disappearance as having happened in calm conditions when meteorological records clearly contradict this.
The numbers themselves had been exaggerated by sloppy research. A boat's disappearance, for example, would be reported, but its eventual (if belated) return to port may not have been.
Some disappearances had, in fact, never happened. One plane crash was said to have taken place in 1937 off Daytona Beach, Florida, in front of hundreds of witnesses; a check of the local papers revealed nothing.
The legend of the Bermuda Triangle is a manufactured mystery, perpetuated by writers who either purposely or unknowingly made use of misconceptions, faulty reasoning, and sensationalism.

Supernatural explanations

Triangle writers have used a number of supernatural concepts to explain the events. One explanation pins the blame on leftover technology from the mythical lost continent of Atlantis. Sometimes connected to the Atlantis story is the submerged rock formation known as the Bimini Road off the island of Bimini in the Bahamas, which is in the Triangle by some definitions. Followers of the purported psychic Edgar Cayce take his prediction that evidence of Atlantis would be found in 1968 as referring to the discovery of the Bimini Road. Believers describe the formation as a road, wall, or other structure, though geologists consider it to be of natural origin.

UFO Air Ship

Other writers attribute the events to UFOs. This idea was used by Steven Spielberg for his science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which features the lost Flight 19 aircrews as alien abductees.

Charles Berlitz, author of various books on anomalous phenomena, lists several theories attributing the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or unexplained forces.

Natural Explanations

Rogue Wave at Bermuda Triangle

Compass variations

Gulf Stream

Human error

Violent weather

Methane hydrates (Methane clathra)

Rogue waves

Notable Incidents

Flight 19: The Avenger planes of Flight-19 took off from the U.S Naval Base of Florida for a routine training session, but never returned.

Flight-19

PBM Martin Mariner: When the hopes for Flight-19 was quickly fading, two Martin Mariner planes were sent by US Navy to search them out. One came back, but strangely the other didn't.

Tudor Star Tiger: Star Tiger, a Tudor Mark-IV aircraft disappeared in Bermuda Triangle shortly before it was about to land at the Bermuda airport.

Fight DC-3: The flight DC-3 NC16002 disappeared when it was only 50 miles south of Florida and about to land in Miami.

Flight 441: The flight 441, a Super Constellation Naval Airliner disappeared in October 1954.

C-54 Skymaster: Apparently it seemed to be a sudden thunderstorm that had disintegrated the plane. But there was much more to the story.

Mary Celeste - The Ghost Ship: Known as one of the ghost ships of Bermuda Triangle, Mary Celeste had many misadventures even before her mystery voyage in 1872. Find out the full story.

Marine Sulphur Queen: This 524-foot carrier of molten sulphur started sail on Feb 2, 1963 from Beaumont, Texas with 39 crew. It was reported lost in Florida Straits on February 4.

Ellen Austin: The Ellen Austin, an American schooner, met with another ship in Bermuda Triangle. The other ship that was moving in full speed, strangely had nobody on board.