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"[Charles] Berlitz's book has been blasted out of the water time after time not for being inaccurate or careless but for being a great steaming heap of lies. Some ships appear to have been made up while others were wrecked thousands of miles away!"

. . . said one disappointed reader on the first page of this thread.

It's not as if he was just relying on bad sources - he was a bad source!

It's not as if he needed the dosh, either: he was, I gather, heir to the language-course fortune. If he felt he needed to prove something, he had the commercial sense to pull off his trick with a catchy title at a time before everyone could be their own fact-checker. :p
 
I bet I've still got his book somewhere, along with my slightly dog-eared copy of Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World. 30 years later, it's not hard to say which one I respect more as a source of information... that said, the teenage me would have lapped up Charles Berlitz's tales!
 
My favourite mission on the brilliant Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX was "Lost in The Triangle". I did manage to complete it a few months ago on my third attempt, but didn't get a glimpse of the rumoured ghost ship or other supernatural stuff. Loved the way the storm crept in and my aircraft's instrumentation became unreliable though. Gives you a really palpable feeling of being there. Must try it again soon.
 
My limited understanding of the green flash phenomenon is that it happens mostly in the tropical latitudes, and very rarely, at that.

Albert Camus mentions this a couple of times in 'L’Étranger' (set in Algeria), clearly expecting the reader to be familiar with green sunset phenomena. we 'did' this book at school and our teacher seemed to know what he was on about too, whereas we were all baffled.
 
The Green Flash is the subject of a 1986 film by Eric Rohmer.

The Green Ray was its English title. Guarding against any Sci-Fi expectations, it was renamed Summer in the USA.

It does feature footage of the phenomenon - Rohmer went to the Canaries to film it. The heroine is intrigued by Jules Verne's 1882 novel, Le rayon vert.



SPOILER ALERT
It may come as a blessed relief when the ray finally arrives - unless you are enchanted by the minutiae of a "difficult" young Parisian woman's holiday arrangements. :cool:
 
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My limited understanding of the green flash phenomenon is that it happens mostly in the tropical latitudes, and very rarely, at that. It happens at sunset as the rays from the sun cross the atmosphere at just the right angle with just the right conditions. The atmosphere acts like a prism and bends the light rays into a giant rainbow of colors. The colors are all briefly visible, but only the color green really stands out as much different than the ambient light conditions and that's what you see as the flash.

Yes, the green flash is a well established astronomical phenomenon. I first got news of it as a kid when it was mentioned in a Introduction to Astronomy type-thing by Patrick Moore.

My understanding of it is that, as the sun appears to descend to the horizon, there is a brief period when the light has to travel through an increased amount of atmosphere - and so the colour of the light, for a very brief period,changes to the next `frequency` which is green.

And - you don't have to live in the tropics to see it! Anywhere with clear skies and a long flat horizon will do. i grew up in Southport (a U.K town on the northwest coastline) and it could be seen there - when looking over the Irish sea from the beaches -from time to time. I myself never saw it but my parents, who are about as non-Fortean as you can get - did.
 
The Bermuda Hexagon
A perfect storm of sensationalist, ratings-driven science TV, and extremely lazy click-driven journalism resulted in a viral story that explains literally nothing about the “Bermuda Triangle”.

by Alex Kasprak

Oct 25, 2016


CLAIM: Satellite images of hexagon-shaped holes in clouds above the Bermuda Triangle prove that large blasts of sinking air are the cause of mysterious shipwrecks and plane crashes in the area.

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FALSE


ORIGIN:
On 26 April 2016, the Science Channel premiered an episode of their show “What on Earth?” that (in part) purported to explain the disappearances of ships and planes in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle through a natural meteorological phenomenon known as microbursts.

Though the Science Channel has heavily promoted an online video of that segment on social media since May 2016, it became a viral news story when the news outlets such as the UK's Daily Mail and Mirror Online picked it up as a new “finding” on 21 October 2016:

The mystery behind the Bermuda Triangle may have finally been cracked. The 500,000 km square stretch in the North Atlantic Ocean has been blamed for the disappearance of at least 75 planes and hundreds of ships over the centuries. But scientists claim the truth behind the “deadly triangle” is all down to hexagonal clouds that create terrifying 170 mph winds[sic] air bombs. It is believed these deadly blasts of air can flip over ships and bring planes crashing into the ocean.

The logic behind the actual Science Channel segment that this claim is based on, if it is a cohesive argument at all, can be summarized as follows:

  1. A NASA satellite took a picture of some hexagon-shaped gaps in clouds over Bermuda.
  2. Another satellite, which had the additional ability to map ocean waves and winds, has captured the same type of clouds over the North Sea, and they were associated with big waves and heavy winds.
  3. Meteorologists say this pattern is the signature of a real phenomenon called a microburst that creates strong winds.
  4. The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle is solved!
When both the Daily Mail and the Mirror Online reported this story in October 2016, they used quotes from theScience Channel segment in a way that suggested they had performed original reporting to verify the claims made in the video. One quote, from Arizona State University climatologist Randall Cerveny, explained the mechanics of a downburst while putting the term "air bomb" into play:

These types of hexagonal shapes over the ocean are in essence air bombs. They are formed by what are called microbursts and they’re blasts of air that come down out of the bottom of a cloud and then hit the ocean and then create waves that can sometimes be massive in size as they start to interact with each other.

Another quote, from Colorado State University satellite meteorologist Steve Miller, turned a mundane scientific statement into a tantalizing mystery:

You don’t typically see straight edges with clouds. Most of the time, clouds are random in their distribution.

Both statements are factual. However, neither scientist claimed that the mechanism they were describing had any explanatory power for the purported anomalous number of disappearances of ships and planes in the area. In a 21 October 2016 USA Today article, both scientists suggested their comments had beenmisrepresented by the Science Channel: ...

http://www.snopes.com/scientists-solve-bermuda-triangle/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
 
I thought the Bermuda Triangle had been debunked years ago. Well, it had, but it seems its fame precedes it so that it rises from its watery grave intermittently.
 
I thought the Bermuda Triangle had been debunked years ago. Well, it had, but it seems its fame precedes it so that it rises from its watery grave intermittently.
I remember someone explaining it all away as some sort of marshy gas bubbles being 'burped' up from the sea bed that pulled the aircraft down.
 
I thought the Bermuda Triangle had been debunked years ago. Well, it had, but it seems its fame precedes it so that it rises from its watery grave intermittently.

It's still the case that the Bermuda Triangle's prescribed area does not cover any statistically extraordinary number of disappearances.
 
It's still the case that the Bermuda Triangle's prescribed area does not cover any statistically extraordinary number of disappearances.

I wonder if the bloke who dreamt it up gets royalties, or if it's a Dan Brown/Holy Blood, Holy Grail affair?
 
I wonder if the bloke who dreamt it up gets royalties

Charles Berlitz Junior has been dead for nearly thirteen years. The phrase Bermuda Triangle would be hard to copyright, consisting as it does of a place and a shape. It seemed catchy enough to escape into the land of dodgy newspaper stories early on and it was all good publicity for the 1974 book.

Spookily enough, Berlitz nearly lost the copyright on his own name when his grandfather's language-school business was sold! :eek:
 
I was just joking, but that was a genuinely interesting answer. You never know what you'll stumble across on here.
 
Charles Berlitz Junior has been dead for nearly thirteen years. The phrase Bermuda Triangle would be hard to copyright, consisting as it does of a place and a shape. ...

Berlitz is the most famous author associated with the Bermuda Triangle, and AFAIK his 1974 book was the first to use the phrase in a book title.

However, the Bermuda Triangle label apparently dates a decade further back (circa 1964) to Vincent Gaddis, writing in Argosy magazine. To the best of my knowledge, Gaddis was the first to dub it 'Bermuda Triangle' (his article was entitled 'The Deadly Bermuda Triangle').

AFAIK George X. Sand was the first writer to specify and focus upon a geographic area as the scene for, and possibly somehow the cause of, such unexplained incidents (Fate magazine, 1952). Sand was the first to describe this area as a triangle whose vertices correlated with Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Florida.

Edit to Add:
NOTE: The complete George X. Sand 1952 article is now accessible in PDF format at:
https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/BermudaTriangle/GeorgeXSand.pdf
 
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Channel 5 have three shows over the next three nights - THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE ENIGMA

Their website says "Documentary series exploring the truth about one of the world's most famous mysteries."

...and that's it. They sure know how to sell it!
 

The interesting point here is that, whilst this seems to be a `popular acience` type debunking exercise, the existence of a dangerous area which coud be called `the Bermuda Triangle` is taken as read.

I thought that the way triangle lore was tackled nowadays was through denying that such an area (in the sense of somewhere more hazardous than other zones of maritime navigation) can be said to exist at all.There is an oft-quoted statistic to the effect that Lloyds of London (or somesuch insurers anyway) refuse to give special rates to those travelling through the triangle - on the grounds that there is no significant statistical risk in doing so.

But I suppose if the Triangle is a recent concoction then there would be no point in producing lavish on-location documentaries about it - even `it's all just human error and waves` type ones.
 
Scientists Claim They've Solved The Bermuda Triangle Mystery

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Have scientists finally solved the mystery of the Bermuda triangle?

The infamous body of water in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean stretches 270,271 square miles between Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto-Rico.

The Bermuda Triangle has been the source of many strange occurrences and mysteries involving both aircraft and boats. It is also known as the Devil’s Triangle and the area features multiple shipping lanes and has claimed over 1,000 lives in the last 100 years. But scientists think they have finally figured out why this continues to happen.

According to Fox News, experts at the University of Southampton believe the mystery can be explained by a natural phenomenon known as “rogue waves.”

Appearing on aChannel 5 documentary “The Bermuda Triangle Enigma,” the scientists used indoor simulators to re-create the monster water surges. These waves, some of which measure 100 feet high, only last for a few minutes. They were first observed by satellites in 1997 off the coast of South Africa and are often seen as the source of so many lost ships.
The research team built a model of the USS Cyclops, a huge vessel which went missing in the triangle in 1918 claiming 300 lives and used it in their indoors simulator. Because of its sheer size and flat base, it did not take long before the model is overcome with water during the simulation, according to Fox News.


Dr. Simon Boxall, an ocean and earth scientist, claims that the Bermuda Triangle area in the Atlantic can see three massive storms coming together from different directions, making the perfect conditions for a rogue wave. Such a massive surge in water could snap a boat, such as the USS Cyclops, into two pieces, said Boxall.

“There are storms to the south and north, which come together. And if there are additional ones from Florida, it can be a potentially deadly formation of rogue waves,” Boxall added.

“They [the rogue waves] are steep, they are high – we’ve measured waves in excess of 30 meters (98 feet),” said Boxall.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-03/scientists-claim-theyve-solved-bermuda-triangle-mystery
 
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In one of the most recent news story postings (within the last few days) I noticed the use of a non-standard illustration for the Bermuda Triangle's vertices. That illustration (carrying a UPI logo, and otherwise uncredited) was apparently removed from the article after I first saw it. I've found the same picture listed as a stock product from Getty Images:

images.jpeg

This version seems to place one vertex in the vicinity of Norfolk rather than Miami.

I'd read that early writers jumping onto the Bermuda Triangle bandwagon from the 1960's onward didn't always define or circumscribe the 'Devil's Triangle' in the manner we always see today (i.e., as defined by Gaddis and Berlitz). The illustration above (which is 'vintage') seems to support the claim of divergent geographical specifications decades ago.

Can anyone else provide evidence of other such past variant definitions for the triangle's location or area of effect?
 
I don't have my copy to hand but I recall Christopher Pick (ed) 'Mysteries of the World', 1979, has an odd map of the triangle, showing it as trapezoid with a fairly long top line.
 
I don't have my copy to hand but I recall Christopher Pick (ed) 'Mysteries of the World', 1979, has an odd map of the triangle, showing it as trapezoid with a fairly long top line.

I've seen trapezoidal / quadrilateral boundaries illustrated for the Bermuda Triangle (and / or associated areas of weirdness), but usually in the broader context of anomalous areas (most often areas of anomalous electromagnetic phenomena) plotted worldwide.

Here (below) are a couple of representative illustrations of these areas (aka 'vile vortices') distributed around the planet.

Could the Pick illustration you recall have been something configured to show this more global 'vile vortex' context?

(I'm curious, because I don't recall seeing any vile vortex literature as far back as 1979.)

2 copy 2.jpg


history-of-the-world-grid-theory-energy-map.gif

 
I've seen trapezoidal / quadrilateral boundaries illustrated for the Bermuda Triangle (and / or associated areas of weirdness), but usually in the broader context of anomalous areas (most often areas of anomalous electromagnetic phenomena) plotted worldwide.

Here (below) are a couple of representative illustrations of these areas (aka 'vile vortices') distributed around the planet.

Could the Pick illustration you recall have been something configured to show this more global 'vile vortex' context?

(I'm curious, because I don't recall seeing any vile vortex literature as far back as 1979.)

No, the Pick book was aimed at mass market types and 8 year olds like me, it didn't go into that sort of detail, after all, there were stigmata, the Shroud, Stonehenge, UFOs, Nessie and everything else to get through, in less than 200 pages. It's just that the fact it so obviously wasn't a triangle that, perhaps, led me to be a bit more questioning. I'd heard of the Bermuda Triangle before, but I'm pretty sure this was the first time I'd seen it mapped - and it wasn't a triangle!
 
One of the disappeared ships sometimes associated with the Bermuda Triangle mythos - the SS Cotopaxi - seems to not be MIA anymore.
Ship linked to Bermuda Triangle mystery found 95 years after it vanished, explorer says

An underwater explorer believes he's found the wreck of a ship that vanished nearly a century ago. The SS Cotopaxi was thought to have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle in 1925, but in a new TV show for the Science Channel, Michael Barnette concluded it sank off the north Florida coast.

The steam-powered bulk carrier left from Charleston, South Carolina, for Havana on November 29, 1925, with 32 passengers on board, according to the Science Channel. The ship never made it to Cuba, and none of the bodies of anyone on board were recovered.

Barnette enlisted a British historian, Guy Walters, to look for new information about the lost ship. He found records from the Cotopaxi's insurance broker saying that the ship sent distress signals on December 1, 1925.

The distress signals were received in Jacksonville, Florida, the Science Channel said. Barnette went to Florida to conduct more research and concluded the wreck of the Cotopaxi was found nearly 35 years ago off the coast of St. Augustine, Florida.

According to the National Ocean Service, the port city is north of the Bermuda Triangle, a part of the Atlantic Ocean generally located between Miami, Bermuda and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Science Channel will show Barnette's journey to the Cotopaxi in the series premiere of "Shipwreck Secrets" on February 9.
SOURCE: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bermud...ound-ship-that-vanished-nearly-100-years-ago/
 
When was the last time the triangle was 'officially' blamed as the reason for an aircraft or ships demise?

That's a good question.

The 'classic' Bermuda Triangle stories tend to involve cases in which there were few or no communications to give clues as to what happened (or was happening ... ) at the time an air or sea craft disappeared.

With real-time communications being more common and reliable fewer craft go missing without providing clues about current or impending trouble.

SS Cotopaxi was documented as having broadcast distress calls. This may well be the reason this disappearance isn't consistently mentioned as one of the canonical Bermuda Triangle mystery cases.
 
Here's another online article about the discovery of the Cotopaxi and its relationship to the Bermuda Triangle folklore. The story is skeptical / debunker oriented, but makes a solid point - neither the Cotopaxi nor many of the other eventually discovered vessels associated with the Triangle mythos actually went down within the alleged Triangle.
Bermuda Triangle theory busted: 1925 ship Cotopaxi found near Florida

The SS Cotopaxi went missing in 1925, while traveling from Charleston, South Carolina, to Havana.

The identification of a nearly 100-year-old shipwreck has debunked a popular conspiracy theory: that the Bermuda Triangle was somehow involved with the 1925 disappearance of the SS Cotopaxi. The steam powered bulk carrier never made it to its destination in Havana.

The real cherry on top of the discovery, however, is that the SS Cotopaxi shipwreck isn't even in the Bermuda Triangle, which stretches from Bermuda to Florida to Puerto Rico.

"That's the thing about this Bermuda Triangle — if you actually look at it on a map, most of the stories associated with it aren't even in the boundaries," Michael Barnette, a marine biologist and diver who identified the wreck, told Live Science. "It's total rubbish." ...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/shipwreck-cotopaxi-bermuda-triangle.html
 
Josh Gates "Expedition Unknown" took another look at the Triangle mystery. The usual hyperbolic language was used that overrode the interesting discoveries.
There's a museum on Bermuda I've wanted to visit, had a display on the various theories.
He dove on the "Bahama road", then worked with people who used sensors that showed it is almost certainly a natural phenomenon.
They sent a balloon with instruments up to 100000 feet, found an anomaly that needs further investigation.
They considered USS Cyclops, where it was noted that not only she but her sisters USS Proteus and Nereus also sank in the Triangle area. The latter losses may be due to German torpedos, though neither was claimed as a target by any U-boat. (Their fourth sister Jupiter became the USN's first dedicated fixed-wing aircraft carrier, renamed USS Langley, eventually sunk by Japanese aircraft.) They also ran a wave tank test that indicated the design was potentially especially vulnerable to "rogue waves", which is an established phenomenon.
More interesting was their discovery underwater of parts possibly from a Mariner aircraft near where a plane was reported to have exploded; this is a known potential flaw of that aircraft design.
 
... They considered USS Cyclops, where it was noted that not only she but her sisters USS Proteus and Nereus also sank in the Triangle area. The latter losses may be due to German torpedos, though neither was claimed as a target by any U-boat. (Their fourth sister Jupiter became the USN's first dedicated fixed-wing aircraft carrier, renamed USS Langley, eventually sunk by Japanese aircraft.) They also ran a wave tank test that indicated the design was potentially especially vulnerable to "rogue waves", which is an established phenomenon. ...

Yep ... We have a thread dedicated to the Cyclops and her sister ships:

The USS Cyclops & Her Sister Ships
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/the-uss-cyclops-her-sister-ships.48700/
 
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