FORBIDDEN HABITAT (Article #5)
BERMUDA TRIANGLE
The
Bermuda triangle also known as Devil’s Triangle. This is a
loosely-defined 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.
In
1964, Vincent Gaddis wrote in the pulp magazine Argosy of the boundaries of the
Bermuda Triangle, giving its vertices as Miami, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and
Bermuda. Subsequent writers did not necessarily follow this definition. Some
writers gave different boundaries and vertices to the triangle, with the total
area varying from 1,300,000 to 3,900,000 km2 (500,000 to 1,510,000
sq mi). Consequently, the determination of which accidents occurred inside the
triangle depends on which writer reported them.
THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE |
William
Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest”, which some scholars claim was based on a
real-life Bermuda shipwreck, may have enhanced the area’s aura of mystery.
Nonetheless, reports of unexplained disappearances did not really capture the
public’s attention until the 20th century. An especially infamous
tragedy occurred in March 1918 when the USS Cyclops, a 542-foot-long Navy cargo
ship with over 300 men and 10,000 tons of manganese ore onboard, sank somewhere
between Barbados and the Chesapeake Bay. The Cyclops never sent out an SOS
distress call despite being equipped to do so, and an extensive search found no
wreckage. “Only God and the sea know what happened to the great ship”, U.S.
President Woodrow Wilson later said. In 1941 two of the Cyclops’ sister ships
similarly vanished without a trace along nearly the same route.
By the
time author Vincent Gaddis coined the phrase “Bermuda Triangle” in a 1964
magazine article, additional mysterious accidents had occurred in the area,
including three passenger planes that went down despite having just sent “all’s
well” messages. Charles Berlitz, whose grandfather founded the Berlitz language
schools, stoked the legend even further in 1974 with a sensational bestseller
about the legend. Since then, scores of fellow paranormal writers have blamed
the triangle’s supposed lethalness on everything from aliens, Atlantis and sea
monsters to time warps and reverse gravity fields, whereas more scientifically
minded theorists have pointed to magnetic anomalies, waterspouts or huge
eruptions of methane gas from the ocean floor.
In all
probability, however, there is no single theory that solves the mystery. As one
sceptic put it, trying to find a common cause for every Bermuda Triangle
disappearance is no more logical than trying to find a common cause for every
automobile accident in Arizona. Moreover, although storms, reefs and the
Gulf Stream can cause navigational challenges there, maritime insurance leader
Lloyd’s of London does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an especially
hazardous place. Neither does the U.S. Coast Guard, which says: “In a review of
many aircraft and vessel losses in t hara over the years, there has been
nothing discovered that would indicate that casualties were the result of
anything other than physical causes. No extraordinary factors have ever been identified.”
List of Some Incident
in Bermuda Triangle:
1945, December
5: ‘Flight 19’ (five TBF Avengers) lost with 14 airmen,
and later the same day ‘PBM Mariner’ BuNo 59225 lost with 13 airmen while searching
for ‘Flight 19’.
1947, July 3:
According to the Bermuda Triangle Legend a ‘B-29 Superfortress’
was lost off Bermuda. Lawrence Kunsche investigated and found no reference to any
such B-29 loss. In fact, the aircraft loss was that of a ‘Douglas C-54’ which
was lost in a storm off the Florida coast. Ironically a B-29 was lost in the vicinity
of Bermuda on November 16, 1949 a B-29 was lost in the Atlantic. 2 crewmen were
missing but on November 19, 1949 18 survivors were rescued 385 miles northeast
of Bermuda.
1948, January
30: ‘Avro Tudor G-AHNP Star Tiger’ lost with 6 crew and 25
passengers, en route from ‘Santa Maria Airport’ in the ‘Azores’ to ‘Kindly
Field, Bermuda’.
1948, December
28: ‘Douglas DC-3 NC16002’ lost with three crew and 36 passengers,
en route from ‘San Juan’, Puerto Rico’, to ‘Miami’.
1921, January
31: Carrol A. Deering, five-masted schooner, Captain W. B.
Wormell, found aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals, near Cape Hatteras, North
Carolina.
1925, December
1: SS Cotopaxi, having departed Charleston, South
Carolina two days earlier bound for Havana, Cuba, radioed a distress a distress
call reporting that the ship was sinking. She was officially listed as overdue
on 31 December.
1969: Great
Isaac Lighthouse (Bimini, Bahamas) – its two keepers disappeared and were never
found. (A hurricane passed through at the time of the disappearances).
DID YOU
KNOW??
After gaining widespread fame as the first person to
sail solo around the globe, Joshua Slocum disappeared on a 1909 voyage from
Martha’s Vineyard to South America. Though it’s unclear exactly what happened,
many sources later attributed his death to the Bermuda Triangle.
Source: Somewhere in Internet
Script by: Pallab Nandi
"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path"
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