The Bermuda Triangle and other fascinating myths and legends

The Bermuda Triangle is an urban legend focused on a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of planes and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The idea of the area as prone to disappearances arose in the mid-20th century.

While some writers have set the vertices of the triangle in Miami, San Juan (Puerto Rico) and Bermuda, others have given different boundaries and vertices, even stretching it as far as the Irish coast. Consequently, the recount of which accidents occurred inside the triangle depends on which writer reported them.

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Passing through the Bermuda Triangle, compasses stopped working, ships were swept away by currents, and clouds devoured airplanes in their path, according to some writers.

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The first big incident that is usually mentioned is the disappearance of the Atalanta ship. It disappeared with her entire crew after setting sail from the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda on January 31, 1880.

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Much has also been written about Flight 19, a training flight that left from Fort Lauderdale base in Florida in 1945 and never returned. One of the search and rescue aircrafts deployed to look for them, also disappeared.

It was Charles Berlitz who "invented" the Bermuda Triangle with a book published in 1973. He had heard stories of pilots and sailors who considered that area "cursed", and so decided to compile those enigmatic tales.

In an interview given by Charles Berlitz in 1977 to The New York Times, he talked about how the weather changes when entering the Bermuda Triangle. And he said that there are pilots who fly, what they think are a few minutes, only to find that the tank is empty because hours have passed.

"Other times, the planes arrive at their destination two hours in advance", said Berlitz. “And, on other occasions, ships or airplanes never arrive at their destination.”

These terrifying stories inspired the film 'The Bermuda Triangle’, directed by Mexican René Cardona Jr and starring John Huston, the director of classics like 'The African Queen', 'The Asphlat Jungle’ and ‘Annie.’

However, this legend, which was part of the mystery folklore of the 1960s and 1970s, faded away. And ships and planes no longer disappear in the Bermuda Triangle. If something does happen, there’s a scientific explanation.

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For instance, compasses change position abruptly in many places due to natural magnetic variations related to the poles. In addition, the Bermuda Triangle is under the influence of the Gulf Stream, which can affect navigation.

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What if  the lost city of Atlantis  is under the waters of the Bermuda Triangle? Charles Berlitz referred to it in his interview with The New York Times.

Image: NASA

A text of Plato is the origin of the Atlantis myth. For years there has been speculation about its existence and location. The Spanish Canary Islands have been pointed out as the last vestige on the waters of Atlantis. And not long ago, there were those who believed they had found proof of Atlantis.

Using this image from Google Ocean (marine equivalent of Google Earth), The Sun newspaper claimed in 2009 that those lines were the ruins of human constructions, proof of Atlantis’ existence.

Image: Google Ocean

Nevertheless, Google was quick to clarify that they were grooves in the water from boat navigation, a mere optical effect, and thus plunged Atlantis back into legend.

There was also a lot of talk, in times prior to globalization, about the yeti, an ape-like creature that lived in the Himalayan Mountain range.

Some explorers swore to have seen the yeti in the blizzard. In Tibet this mythical monster is called Jigou. His relatives are the Australian Yowie, the kunk of the South American Andes or the Siberian chuchunga.

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Recorded yeti sightings have always been of a single individual and in extreme weather conditions. Hence, science has given them little reliability. A DNA study carried out in 2017 with alleged yeti remains concluded, according to The Washington Post, that they were bears’.

Image: Pixabay

However, the yeti has had a few  exceptional witnesses: Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (in the image), the first ever climbers who reached Everest’s summit. And Reinhold Messner, the first person to climb 14 summits of the Himalayas without oxygen.

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The American version of the yeti, the Bigfoot, is more of the same: a legend of a cross between a bear and a gorilla that lives in the forests of North America.

In the 20th century there was still wild and unknown nature within the United States where, according to legend, Bigfoot took refuge. In Eureka, California, this image was captured, alleged graphic proof of the supposed existence of that mythical being.

Bigfoot sightings spread across North America throughout the 20th century. In the 21st century no one (or almost no one) has seen him.

Image: Greg Rosenke/Unsplash

The same thing happens with the Loch Ness monster in Scotland. Before, people even claimed to have taken pictures of him, like this one, but now, no one has reported seeing him.

Another mystery, very much from the press of yesteryear, is that of crop circles. Attributed to aliens, they were famous in the 1960s and 1970s, and appeared mainly in Australia and the United Kingdom. In 1991 British Doug Bower and Dave Chorley revealed that they had made about 200  for over more than two decades.

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What was not the work of two eccentrics, but very old geoglyphs, are the famous Nazca lines in Peru, drawings that can only be seen from the sky, at a considerable height. These are supposed messages to the gods made by the Nazca (pre-Columbian) culture, made between 200 and 600 BC.

Still in 2010 National Geographic went for the title: 'Noah's Ark founds in Turkey?' Because the possibility that some vestige of the biblical ship that sailed during the flood remains hidden somewhere, is something that people want to believe.

The aforementioned 2010 article referred to an expedition that claimed to have found remains of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat, located in the area of Turkey bordering Armenia and Iran. This mountain is almost always mentioned as the place where Noah landed after the flood.

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The 2010 expedition told The Daily Mail that it had found seven large wooden compartments buried 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) above sea level, near the top of Mount Ararat. The discovery was not scientifically sustained and, like many mysteries, it faded away.

Image: Pixabay

Ghosts, meanwhile, have been modernized. The iconic white sheet has given way to other forms. Already in 1982 the famous horror film 'Poltergeist' showed how the inhabitants of the afterlife manifest themselves to the living.

Image: Kevin Ecate/Unsplash

Legends, folklore, popular beliefs, fantasy or, perhaps, mysterious reality. The unknown side of the universe, summed up in enigmas, sometimes takes fabulous and poetic forms. Other times, without knowing why, these enigmas fade through time.

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