Sizes of the areas also differ

One of the few places on earth that has continued to fascinate people for centuries is the Bermuda Triangle. The Devil’s Triangle Vincent Gaddis, credited with putting the triangle “on the map” in a 1964 Argosy feature, described the triangle as extending from Florida to Bermuda, southwest to Puerto Rico and back to Florida through the Bahamas; while another author puts the apexes of the triangle somewhere in Virginia, on the western coast of Bermuda and around Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico (Rosenberg, 1974).

Sizes of the areas also differ, with descriptions ranging from 500,000 to 1. 5 million square miles. The geography of the area is perplexing. The humid subtropical climate of the region brings it an annual heavy rainfall in excess of 60 inches (152 cm). Dangerous hurricanes and harsh thunderstorms occasionally drop 10 inches of rain within hours. The floor area of the region has also not been totally mapped out because it varies greatly in depth. The Florida coastline is shallow but farther off, the ground just sink to depths of thousands of feet.

About 100 miles north of Puerto Rico is the deepest part of the Atlantic, the Puerto Rico Trench, estimated at 30,000 feet deep while the Florida Straits within this area are approximately 5000 feet deep (“Bermuda Triangle”). Mysteries in the Bermuda Christopher Columbus – in his journals, he recounts a bizarre experience when his ship ran into the Sargasso Sea. He could see no land in sight for miles and his compass acted strangely. He saw a big meteoric ball fall from the sky before Columbus and his crew saw dancing lights in the horizon.

They wandered about in the Carribbean for over a week yet before finally sighting land (“Bermuda Triangle”). 1974 – Charles Berlitz wrote the book, The Bermuda Triangle. It sold more than 18 million copies and translated into 30 languages. The publication was followed by a documentary by Richard Winer (Hagen, 2004). The more popular incidents include the following (“Startling New Secrets”): ? March 6, 1918, the USS Cyclops, a huge collier used to carry coal to facilitate US Navy operations during World War I, with a crew of 306, disappeared en route from Barbados to Virginia.

? January 30, 1921, a cargo schooner, the Carroll Deering, was found adrift at Diamond Shoals near North Carolina without a sign of its crew. ? December 5, 1945, five US Navy bombers on a training exercise became disoriented and then disappeared. Search-and-rescue (SAR) operations were unsuccessful, and one of the SAR vessels, a Mariner aircraft, also vanished. ? January 30, 1948, the Star Tiger, a four-engined Tudor IV with 31 people on board vanished on a flight to Bermuda from the Azores.

? January 17, 1949, the Star Ariel, another Tudor IV would vanish on the same region with 19 passengers on board. ? October 30, 1954, Flight 441, a U. S. Navy R7V-1 (the military version of a Lockheed Super Constellation) crewed by 42 sailors, disappeared between Patuxent River NAS and Lajes, Azores ? February 3, 1963, the SS Marine Sulphur Queen, vanished en route to Virginia from Texas with a crew of 39, shortly after it radioed its position near Key West, Florida. Three days after, a lifeboat from the tanker was found by Coast Guard searchers but no bodies or wreckage was recovered.

? December 22, 1967. A cabin cruiser with the ironic name of Witchcraft disappeared off the Miami coast. These coincidences only fascinated the people even more. Theories Behind the Mysteries Countless theories have been proposed to explain the numerous disappearances that occur in this area (“The Bermuda Triangle”). ? The Bermuda Triangle is one of the two places on earth that a magnetic ompass point towards true north, a variation of as much as 20 degrees toward the magnetic north.

The navigator who does not realize this would find himself in deep trouble. ? The character of the Gulf Stream flowing through the area is swift and turbulent and can quickly erase any evidence of a disaster. ? Dr. Ben Clennell of Leeds University in England theorizes that the high concentration of methane hydrates below the seabed oftentimes escape during events of landslides making any ship floating above sink. ? The Triangle is a portal to another dimension and it opens at certain time intervals