MYSTERY OF BERMUDA TRIANGLE

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is an undefined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The triangle does not exist according to the US Navy, and the name is not recognized by the US Board on Geographic Names

. 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. In a 2013 study, the World Wide Fund for Nature identified the world’s 10 most dangerous waters for shipping, but the Bermuda Triangle was not among them. Contrary to popular belief, insurance companies do not charge higher premiums for shipping in this area.

INTRODUCTIONBermuda Triangle, region of the western Atlantic Ocean

that has become associated in the popular imagination with mysterious maritime disasters. Also known as the Devil's Triangle, the triangle-shaped area covers about 1,140,000 sq km (about 440,000 sq mi) between the island of Bermuda, the coast of southern Florida, and Puerto Rico.

The sinister reputation of the Bermuda Triangle may be traceable to reports made in the late 15th century by navigator Christopher Columbus concerning the Sargasso Sea, in which floating masses of gulfweed were regarded as uncanny and perilous by early sailors; others date the notoriety of the area to the mid-19th century, when a number of reports were made of unexplained disappearances and mysteriously abandoned ships. The earliest recorded disappearance of a United States vessel in the area occurred in March 1918, when the USS Cyclops vanished.

The incident that consolidated the reputation of the Bermuda Triangle was the disappearance in December 1945 of Flight 19, a training squadron of five U.S. Navy torpedo bombers. The squadron left Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with 14 crewmen and disappeared after radioing a series of distress messages; a seaplane sent in search of the squadron also disappeared. Aircraft that have disappeared in the area since this incident include a DC-3 carrying 27 passengers in 1948 and a C-124 Globemaster with 53 passengers in 1951. Among the ships that have disappeared was the tanker ship Marine Sulphur Queen, which vanished with 39 men aboard in 1963.

Books, articles, and television broadcasts investigating the Bermuda Triangle emphasize that, in the case of most of the disappearances, the weather was favorable, the disappearances occurred in daylight after a sudden break in radio contact, and the vessels vanished without a trace. However, skeptics point out that many supposed mysteries result from careless or biased consideration of data. For example, some losses attributed to the Bermuda Triangle actually occurred outside the area of the triangle in inclement weather conditions or in darkness, and some can be traced to known mechanical problems or inadequate equipment. In the case of Flight 19, for example, the squadron commander was relatively inexperienced, a compass was faulty, the squadron failed to follow instructions, and the aircraft were operating under conditions of deteriorating weather and visibility and with a low fuel supply. Other proposed explanations for disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle include the action of physical forces unknown to science, a “hole in the sky,” an unusual chemical component in the region's seawater, and abduction by extraterrestrial beings.

What is the Bermuda Triangle? The Bermuda Triangle is a place where

mysterious things happen. Planes and boats disappear in the

Bermuda Triangle, sometimes without a trace.

Sometimes boats are washed up on shore with nobody on board.

It is also known as the devils triangle. On the 14th of October 1961 a B52

bomber disappeared in the Bermuda triangle.

MAP OF BERMUDA TRIANGLE

TRIANGLE AREAThe 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. But subsequent writers did not follow this definition. Every writer gives different boundaries and vertices to the triangle, with the total area varying from 500,000 to 1.5 million square miles. Consequently, the determination of which accidents have occurred inside the triangle depends on which writer reports them. The United States Board on Geographic Names does not recognize this name, and it is 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.

HISTORYORIGINSThe earliest allegation of unusual disappearances

in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 17, 1950 article published in The Miami Herald (Associated Press) 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 again in the April 1962 issue of American Legion magazine. In it, author Allan W. Eckert wrote 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." He also wrote 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' 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.

LARRY KUSCHE Lawrence David Kusche, a research librarian from

Arizona State University and author of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved (1975) argued that many claims of Gaddis and subsequent writers were often exaggerated, dubious or unverifiable. Kusche's research revealed a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies between Berlitz's accounts and statements from eyewitnesses, participants, and others involved in the initial incidents. Kusche noted cases where pertinent information went unreported, such as the disappearance of round-the-world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst, which Berlitz had presented as a mystery, despite clear evidence to the contrary.

Another example was the ore-carrier recounted by Berlitz as lost without trace three days out of an Atlantic port when it had been lost three days out of a port with the same name in the Pacific Ocean. Kusche also argued that a large percentage of the incidents that sparked allegations of the Triangle's mysterious influence actually occurred well outside it. Often his research was simple: he would review period newspapers of the dates of reported incidents and find reports on possibly relevant events like unusual weather, that were never mentioned in the disappearance stories.

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 BEHIND BERMUDA TRIANGLETriangle 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.

ALIEN THEORIESOther 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.

Aliens are another theory of the Bermuda triangle.

Aliens may have abducted the sailors. The aliens took them to experiment on.

NATURAL EXPLANATIONSGULF STREAMThe Gulf Stream is a deep ocean current that

originates in the Gulf of Mexico and then flows through the Straits of Florida into the North Atlantic. In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and, like a river, it can and does carry floating objects. It has a surface velocity of up to about 2.5 metres per second (5.6 mi/h). A small plane making a water landing or a boat having engine trouble can be carried away from its reported position by the current.

False-color image of the Gulf Stream flowing north through the western Atlantic Ocean. (NASA)

HUMAN ERROROne of the most cited explanations in official

inquiries as to the loss of any aircraft or vessel is human error.] Human stubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailing yacht, the Revonoc, as he sailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on January 1, 1958.

The boats might have broken down. Pilots could have crashed into the sea. Someone could have tampered with the

components.

Location of many mysterious disappearances of boats and planes.

1854 Bella 1872 Mary Celeste 1902 Freya 1918 USS Cyclops 1921 Carroll Deering 1925 Raifuku Maru 1932 John and Mary 1940 Gloria Colita 1945 Flight 19 - 5 military planes 1950 Globemaster 1953 British York Transport 1955 Connemara IV 1963 Marine Sulphur Queen 1965 C-119 Flying Boxcar 1968 Scorpion 1969 Teignmouth Electron 1972 V. A. Fogg

THANK

YOUDONE BY MITHUN RAJ P.R CLASS:IX ROLL NO:24