bermuda triangle

Unusual events in that area date back in recorded history to 1493 and the first voyage of Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) to the New World. In his log, Columbus noted that his compass readings were askew within the area now called the Bermuda Triangle, and he and his crew were confused by shallow areas of sea with no land nearby.

The term "Bermuda Triangle" was first used in an article written by Vincent H. Gaddis for Argosy magazine in 1964. Gaddis claimed that several ships and planes had disappeared without explanation in that area. The article was expanded and included in his book, Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea (1965), where he described nine mysterious incidents and provided extensive detail. Many newspapers carried a story in December of 1967 about strange incidents in the Bermuda Triangle after a National Geographic Society news release brought attention to Gaddis's book. The triangle was featured in a cover story in Argosy in 1968, in a book called Limbo of the Lost (1969) by John Wallace Spencer, and in a documentary film, The Devil's Triangle, in 1971. Charles Berlitz's 1974 bestseller The Bermuda Triangle marked the height of the disaster area legend, but some of its sensationalized claims were quickly proved inaccurate.

As early as 1952, George X. Sands had noted in a report in Fate magazine that an unusually large number of strange accidents had occurred in the region associated with the Bermuda Triangle. That many of the accidents in the area are intriguing, and that the area does have some natural conditions that sailors and pilots need to be aware of, has not been challenged. However, neither statistics nor documented evidence indicates that the number of accidents is unusually high or without explanation.

In March 1918, during World War I, the USS Cyclops vanished in the Bermuda Triangle. That ship may have been a casualty of war, but the December 1945 disappearance of Flight 19, a training squadron of five U.S. Navy torpedo bombers, became the most notorious of disappearances associated with the Bermuda Triangle. The squadron left Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with 14 crewmen and disappeared after radioing in several distress messages. A seaplane sent in search of the squadron also vanished. Those two airplane disappearances were frequently cited as the Bermuda Triangle legend grew during the 1960s and 1970s.

Alien abductions come in at the top ten reasons for the Bermuda Triangle disappearances at number 8 because they are so popularized however unlikely. Part of the hype about ‘mysterious’ accidents in the area was heightened in 1967 with a press release by the National Geographic Society detailing strange phenomena in and around the Triangle. Of course alien abduction was not a suggestion, but people soon began filling in the blanks with explanations like aliens disrupting navigational equipment in order to abduct people. The fog of the psychedelic sixties was beginning to lift as people were moved into the 70s, but the idea of aliens continued long after the 60s became a transcendental memory. Even Steven Spielberg in this science fiction film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, features the lost Flight 19 aircrew that went missing in 1945 while over the Triangle. A massive land and sea search was mounted for the 5 Navy torpedo bombers that disappeared while in routine flight as well as a rescue plane that went missing after being sent to search for the missing crew. Flight 19 was made up of a 13 men with neither bodies nor wreckage ever being found including the rescue plane or the other 14 men who went in search of Flight 19. Shot down or beamed up to Mars?

Leftover technology from the lost city of Atlantis

Of the various claims about the Bermuda Triangle, the suggestion that it is the location of the lost city of Atlantis is one popularized idea and it comes in at number 10. The well-known Edgar Cayce prophesied that in 1968 archeologists would find the entrance to the drowned city of Atlantis near Bimini in the Bermuda Triangle. At that time a special submerged rock wall formation was found off an island in the Bahamas and many think this is evidence of the lost city of Atlantis. According to the legend, the city of Atlantis was powered by crystals and that they still send out waves of energy today as they lay buried under the sea causing ships and planes to be sent off course by effected navigational equipment. Conspiracy theorists today also speculate about an underwater military base known as Underwater Area 51 as reason for disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle.

DELIBERATE ATTACKS OF DESTRUCTION

Much more plausible, although much more tragic, are deliberate attacks of destruction coming in at number 7. It’s a cause caked with nothing more than the  mundane reality of countless casualties at sea and at air from the long-time, human practice of war.  Although as far as Flight 19 was concerned, there was no evidence or suggestions that the missing planes disappeared because of deliberate attacks of destruction, many believe these are the reasons for many other missing planes and ships in the Bermuda Triangle area. Deliberate acts of destruction includes acts of war and piracy. Records in enemy files during World Wars have documented numerous losses, and of those that aren’t recorded, many are assumed to have been sunk by either surface raiders or submarines. Piracy is the capture of crafts at sea by thieves, drug smugglers, and pirates. In the past and even today there are many recorded episodes of these acts of piracy being responsible for missing vessels at sea even long after captain Blackbeard went to his watery grave.

Methane Gas

an explanation of the Bermuda Triangle as being a mysterious, ocean-eating triangle in the Atlantic is methane gas. An explanation for some disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle has focused on the presence of vast fields of a natural gas called methane. Laboratory experiments have proven that bubbles of methane could indeed sink a model ship by decreasing the density of the water with wreckage being very likely to rise to the surface to then be rapidly swept away by the Gulf Stream. It has additionally been proposed that these eruptions or ‘mud volcanoes’ can produce frothy water that is no longer capable of providing adequate buoyancy for ships causing them to sink very rapidly without warning. It has been proposed that this methane gas can also effect planes as well as ships. Publications by the USGS describes large stores of undersea hydrates worldwide but according to other papers, no large release of gas is believed to have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle for the past 15,000 years. No release or just no records?

GEOMAGNETIC FIELDS

Strange disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle have been linked with evidence of compass and navigational problems, making geomagnetic fields a real, plausible case for disappearances in the Triangle. Problems with magnetic equipment from geomagnetic fields is 5 of the top ten reasons the Triangle became mystified. Many have theorized that there are magnetic anomalies in the area and that the region is unique in that it’s one of only two places on Earth where true north and magnetic north line up which can vary readings on   navigational equipment. In relation to the ‘electronic fog’ theory by Rob MacGregor and Bruce Gernon, powerful electromagnetic storms from within the Earth break through to the surface and come into the atmosphere leaving a fog behind.

Weather and rouge waves

Caribbean-Atlantic storms yield unpredictable weather and waterspouts within the area of the Bermuda Triangle making weather and rough waves one of the biggest causes of disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle at number 3 by many scientists. According to Norman Hooke who works for Lloyd’s Maritime Information Services in London, “The Bermuda Triangle does not exist.” He says instead the incidents are weather-related accidents. Destructive hurricanes in the area are well-documented occasions as well as rogue waves that sink ships and oil platforms. Recent satellite research has proven one single wave to reach as high as 80 feet or higher in open ocean areas

Sheer myth

The only explanation is no explanation, that is to say, the Bermuda Triangle theory is based on superstition that took hold of people’s imagination mostly starting in the 20^th century making the propensity people have to gravitate to tall tales the number one reason the Bermuda Triangle story exists at all. Over time, writers took previous claims of old, sailor tales and legends and even records by Christopher Columbus himself of the area having “strange dancing lights on the horizon” “flames in the sky” and “bizarre compass bearings” and continued to embellish and add to the mystery with more up-to-date embellishments. Today it is believed that what Columbus was observing were Taino natives cooking fires from their canoes or on the beach. The compass readings were off because of a miscalculation of the movement of a particular star, and the flames in the sky were meteors falling to earth which are easily seen while at sea.

According to The Skeptics Dictionary, many of the disasters claimed to have occurred in the area did not even happen in the Bermuda Triangle. As the Dictionary points out, “The real mystery is how the Bermuda Triangle became a mystery at all.” Yet, although the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle has been put to rest by many credible researchers and scientists, the name and the mystery, continues on.