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The most mysterious place in the world Introduction The aim of this report is to present the subject of endless legends, myths, conspiracies and the most mysterious place in the world-The Bermuda Triangle. Furthermore, I will speak about its history, paranormal and natural explanations, also about the most notable incidents.

What is the Bermuda Triangle? The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle or Hurricane Alley, 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. Others have referred to it as Limbo of the Lost or the Hoodoo Sea. Though the US government does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an actual geographic location or threat, its legends have long painted a picture of death, mystery, and fear. The nearness of the Bermuda Triangle is amongst the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world, with ships frequently crossing through it for ports in the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean islands. Cruise ships and pleasure craft regularly sail through the region, and commercial and private aircraft routinely fly over it. Popular culture has attributed various disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraterrestrial beings.

The history and its origins *The earliest suggestion of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 17, 1950, article published in The Miami Herald .Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door",a short article by George Sand covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a group of five US Navy Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo 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 February 1964, Vincent Gaddis wrote an article called "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" in the pulp magazine Argosy saying 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. *When Christopher Columbus passed through the Bermuda Triangle on his first voyage to the new world, he recorded that a bursting flame of fire struck the sea and caused a strange light to appear in the distance a few weeks later.

Explanation attempts Paranormal explanations Triangle writers have used a number of supernatural concepts to explain the events. One explanation is 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. Charles Berlitz, author of various books, lists several theories attributing the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or unexplained forces.

Natural explanations Compass variations Compass problems are one of the cited phrases in many Triangle incidents. While some have theorized that unusual local magnetic anomalies may exist in the area,such anomalies have not been found. Compasses have natural magnetic variations in relation to the magnetic poles, a fact which navigators have known for centuries. Magnetic (compass) north and geographic (true) north are exactly the same only for a small number of places. But the public may not be as informed, and think there is something mysterious about a compass "changing" across an area as large as the Triangle, which it naturally will. Other natural explanations are: Gulf Stream(a river), human error, violent weather and methane hydrates.

The most notable incdents *In 1895, Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail solo around the world, vanished on a voyage from Martha's Vineyard to South America. Slocum should have never been lost at sea — he was known as a fantastic sailor — and his unexpected disappearance has since been attributed to Bermuda Triangle. * In 1918, the US Navy's largest and fastest fuel ship, the USS Cyclops, disappeared en route from the Caribbean to Baltimore with 309 crew members and didn't leave a single trace of what had happened. * In 1941, a Navy ship called the USS Proteus was carrying 58 passengers and a cargo of ore from St. Thomas to the East Coast when it suddenly vanished in the Bermuda Triangle. One month later, its sister ship, The USS Nereus, disappeared with 61 people along the same route. * In 1945, the legend of the Bermuda triangle began to take hold even more when five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from a naval base in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl. and vanished in the Atlantic Ocean before completing their mission.

* In 1948, a DC-3 commercial flight vanished over the Triangle with 29 passengers and two crew members headed toward Miami. * One year later, in 1949, a G-AGRE plane dubbed "Star Ariel" departed from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica. But the flight suddenly lost communications when it switched over to Kingston frequency above the Bermuda triangle. Though the weather was clear and the flight appeared to be on track, it was never seen or heard from again. * In 1963, the SS Marine Sulphur Queen, a large tanker ship carrying 39 passengers and molten sulfur, was last seen near the southern coast of Florida. After more than two weeks of looking, the rescue team only found a few pieces of debris. * In 1978, an experienced pilot named Irving Rivers departed from the US Virgin Islands on a solo flight to pick up passengers in St. Thomas. The weather was calm and Rivers was just one mile from landing when his signal lights suddenly disappeared from the radar. A search team was sent to look for him, but the plane was never found. * In 1984, a Cessna plane departing from Fort Lauderdale, and en route to an island in the Bahamas, completely vanished from radar signals before dropping down into the ocean. There were no radio signals issued, and though one woman claimed to have seen the plane plunge into the water, no wreckage was ever found.

The mysterious story In 1881, legend has it that the Ellen Austin, a ship sailing from Liverpool to New York, encountered a "ghost ship" in the Bermuda Triangle — and things quickly went awry. When the Ellen Austin approached the foggy waters of the Sargasso Sea — an area of the Atlantic Ocean that overlaps with the Bermuda Triangle — the crew encountered a fully stocked, abandoned ship. Seeing this as an opportunity to seize valuable cargo, they sent some of their men in to occupy the ship and sail the remaining journey side by side. But a wicked storm quickly separated the two ships, and when they were reunited the next day, there wasn't a trace of the crew in sight. The ship was once more abandoned but left packed with valuable resources, so the captain of the Ellen Austin tried boarding it again. But when crew members got aboard for the second time, a thick and blinding fog rolled in and separated the ships. When the fog finally cleared, the "ghost" ship had completely vanished, according to stories recounted in contemporary newspapers.

Conclusion Even though this area has the most tragic unexplained deaths of all time it can all have natural explanations as mentioned earlier. It should be noted that not much disappearances or deaths have taken place lately in this area as today is more technically advanced. Today the Bermuda Triangle is an area where plenty of ships and aircrafts pass through regularly without any

problems. It has also been noted that most of the incidents that are said to have taken place here are not true. It was all made up by the authors in order to get more attention from the readers.