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

                Unexplained circumstances surround some of these accidents, including one in which the pilots of a squadron of U.S. Navy bombers became disoriented while flying over the area; the planes were never found. Other boats and planes have seemingly vanished from the area in good weather without even radioing distress messages. But although myriad fanciful theories have been proposed regarding the Bermuda Triangle, none of them prove that mysterious disappearances occur more frequently there than in other well-traveled sections of the ocean. In fact, people navigate the area every day without incident.

                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 20^th 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"

                Buddha