Now its Bebo's turn to be at Madame Tussauds...

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Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor unveiledher wax statue at the Madame Tussauds museum.  

"It is an honour and a privilege for me tohave my own wax figure at Madame Tussauds Blackpool and even more so to launcha global Bollywood exhibition. This is a moment of pride for the Indiancinema," Kareena said. It took four months to create the wax statue,which cost £150,000. 

"The figure looks incredible and is solife-like. I had to do a double take when I saw myself - they have really donea superb job at capturing my essence," she added. 

The unveiling of Kareena's wax figure also flaggedoff a global exhibition, where the statues of Bollywood stars will be taken tosix major cities around the world to be exhibited, before they are brought backto Blackpool in January next year. 

 Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Amitabh Bachchanand Aishwarya Rai too have their wax figures in Tussauds'.

The Devil's Triangle.............

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The BermudaTriangle, also known as the Devil'sTriangle, is a region of the northwestern Atlantic Ocean in which a number of aircraft and surface vessels are alleged to have disappeared. Somepeople have claimed that these disappearances fall beyond the boundaries of human error, equipment failure or natural disasters. Popular culture hasattributed some of these disappearances to theparanormal, a suspension of the laws of physics, or activity by extraterrestrialbeings. Though asubstantial body of documentation exists showing numerous incidents to havebeen inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors, and numerousofficial agencies have gone on record as stating that the number and nature ofdisappearances is similar to any other area of ocean, proponents of paranormalphenomena claim that many have remained unexplained despite considerableinvestigation.
The Triangle AreaThe boundaries of the Triangle vary with the author; some statingits shape is akin to a trapezoid coveringthe Straits of Florida,the Bahamas andthe entire Caribbean islandarea and the Atlantic east to theAzores; others add to itthe Gulf of Mexico. The more familiar triangularboundary in most written works has as its points somewhere on the Atlanticcoast of Florida; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda, with most of the accidentsconcentrated along the southern boundary around the Bahamas and the FloridaStraits.The area is one of the most heavily-sailed shipping lanes in theworld, with ships crossing through it daily for ports in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean Islands. Cruise ships are alsoplentiful, and pleasure craft regularly go back and forth between Florida andthe islands. It is also a heavily flown route for commercial and privateaircraft heading towards Florida, the Caribbean and South America from points north.

History of the Triangle story

Origins

The first article of any kind in which the legend of the Trianglebegan appeared in newspapers by E.V.W. Jones on September 16, 1950, through theAssociated Press. Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea MysteryAt Our Back Door", a short article by George X. Sand covering the loss ofseveral planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a group of five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger bombers on a training mission. Sand'sarticle was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where thelosses took place. Flight 19 alone would be covered in the April 1962 issue of American Legion Magazine. It was claimed that the flight leaderhad been heard saying "We are entering white water, nothing seems right.We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white." It was alsoclaimed that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes"flew off to Mars." This was the first article to connect thesupernatural to Flight 19, but it would take another author, Vincent Gaddis,writing in the February 1964 Argosy magazine to take Flight 19 togetherwith other mysterious disappearances and place it under the umbrella of a newcatchy name: "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle"; he would build on that article with amore detailed book, InvisibleHorizons, the next year. Others would follow with their ownworks: John Wallace Spencer (Limbo of the Lost, 1969, repr. 1973); Charles Berlitz (The Bermuda Triangle, 1974); Richard Winer (The Devil's Triangle, 1974) , and many others, all keeping to someof the same supernatural elements outlined by Eckert.

Kusche's research

Lawrence David Kusche, a research librarian from Arizona State University and author of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery:Solved (1975) has challenged this trend. Kusche's researchrevealed a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies between Berlitz'saccounts and statements from eyewitnesses, participants, and others involved inthe initial incidents. He noted cases where pertinent information wentunreported, such as the disappearance of round-the-world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst, which Berlitz hadpresented as a mystery, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Another examplewas the ore-carrier Berlitz recounted as lost without trace three days out ofan Atlantic port when it had been lost three daysout of a port with the same name in the Pacific Ocean. Kusche also argued that a largepercentage of the incidents which have sparked the Triangle's mysteriousinfluence actually occurred well outside it. Often his research wassurprisingly simple: he would go over period newspapers and see items likeweather reports that were never mentioned in the stories.Kusche came to a conclusion:§  Thenumber of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantlygreater, proportionally speaking, than in any other part of the ocean.§  Inan area frequented by tropicalstorms, the number of disappearances that did occur were, for the most part,neither disproportionate, unlikely, nor mysterious; furthermore, Berlitz andother writers would often fail to mention such storms.§  Thenumbers themselves had been exaggerated by sloppy research. A boat listed asmissing would be reported, but its eventual (if belated) return to port may nothave been reported.§  Somedisappearances had in fact, never happened. One plane crash was said to havetaken place in 1937 off DaytonaBeach, Florida, in front of hundreds of witnesses; a check of the local papersrevealed nothing.Kusche concluded that:The Legend of the Bermuda Triangle isa manufactured mystery… perpetuated by writers who either purposely orunknowingly made use of misconceptions, faulty reasoning, and sensationalism.

Further responsesThe marine insurer Lloyd's of London has determined the Triangle to be nomore dangerous than any other area of ocean, and does not charge unusual ratesfor passage through the region.United StatesCoast Guard recordsconfirm their conclusion. In fact, the number of supposed disappearances isrelatively insignificant considering the number of ships and aircraft whichpass through on a regular basis.The Coast Guard is also officially skeptical of the Triangle,noting that they collect and publish, through their inquiries, muchdocumentation contradicting many of the incidents written about by the Triangleauthors. In one such incident involving the 1972 explosion and sinking of thetanker V.A. Fogg in the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guardphotographed the wreck and recovered several bodies in contrast with oneTriangle author's claim that all the bodies had vanished, with the exception ofthe captain, who was found sitting in his cabin at his desk, clutching a coffeecup.

 

Supernatural explanations

Triangle writers have used a number of supernatural concepts toexplain the events. One explanation pins the blame on leftover technology fromthe mythical lost continent of Atlantis. Sometimes connected to the Atlantisstory is the submerged rock formation known as the Bimini Roadoff the island of Bimini in theBahamas, which is in the Triangle by some definitions. Followers of thepurported psychic Edgar Cayce takehis prediction that evidence of Atlantis would be found in 1968 as referring tothe discovery of the Bimini Road. Believers describe the formationas a road, wall, or other structure, though geologists consider it to be ofnatural origin. Other writers attribute the events to UFOs. This idea was used by Steven Spielberg for his science fiction film CloseEncounters of the Third Kind, which features the lost Flight 19as alien abductees.Charles Berlitz,grandson of a distinguished linguist and author of various additional books onanomalous phenomena, has kept in line with this extraordinary explanation, andattributed the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or unexplained forces. 

 

 Natural explanations

 

      Compass variations

Compass problemsare one of the cited phrases in many Triangle incidents. While some have theorizedthat unusual local magnetic anomalies may exist in the area, such anomalieshave not been shown to exist. It should also be remembered that compasses havenatural magnetic variations in relation to the Magnetic poles. For example, in the United States the only places where magnetic (compass)north and geographic (true) north are exactly the same are on a linerunning from Wisconsin tothe Gulf of Mexico. Navigators have known this forcenturies. But the public may not be as informed, and think there is somethingmysterious about a compass "changing" across an area as large as theTriangle, which it naturally will.Deliberate acts of destructionThis can fall into two categories: acts of war, and acts ofpiracy. Records in enemy files have been checked for numerous losses; whilemany sinkings have been attributed to surface raiders or submarines during the World Wars anddocumented in the various command log books, many others which have beensuspected as falling in that category have not been proven. It is suspectedthat the loss of USS Cyclops in 1918, as well as her sister ships Proteus and Nereus in World War II, were attributed to submarines,but no such link has been found in the German records.Piracy, as defined by the taking of a ship orsmall boat on the high seas, is an act which continues to this day. Whilepiracy for cargo theft is more common in the western Pacific and Indian oceans,drug smugglers do steal pleasure boats for smuggling operations, and may havebeen involved in crew and yacht disappearances in the Caribbean. Historicallyfamous pirates of the Caribbean (where piracy was common from about 1560 to the1760s) include Edward Teach (Blackbeard) and Jean Lafitte. Lafitte is sometimes said to bea Triangle victim himself.Gulf StreamThe Gulf Stream isan ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico, and then through the Straits of Florida,into the North Atlantic. In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and like ariver, it can and does carry floating objects. It has a surface velocity of up toabout 2.5 metres per second (5.6 mph). A small plane making a waterlanding or a boat having engine trouble will be carried away from its reportedposition by the current, as happened to the cabin cruiser Witchcraft on December 22, 1967, when it reportedengine trouble near the Miami buoy marker one mile (1.6 km) from shore, but wasnot there when a Coast Guard cutter arrived.

Humanerror

One of the most cited explanations in official inquiries as to theloss of any aircraft or vessel is human error. Whether deliberate oraccidental, humans have been known to make mistakes resulting in catastrophe,and losses within the Bermuda Triangle are no exception. For example, the CoastGuard cited a lack of proper training for the cleaning of volatile benzene residueas a reason for the loss of the tanker V.A.Fogg in 1972. Humanstubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailingyacht, the Revonoc, as hesailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on January 1, 1958. Manylosses remain inconclusive due to the lack of wreckage which could be studied,a fact cited on many official reports.

Area51

Area 51 is a nickname for a military baselocated in the southern portion of Nevada in thewestern United States (83 miles north-northwest of downtown Las Vegas). Situated at its center, on thesouthern shore of Groom Lake, is a large secretive militaryairfield. The base's primary purpose is to support development and testing ofexperimental aircraft and weapons systems. The base lies within the United States AirForce's vast Nevada Testand Training Range. Although the facilities at the range are managedby the 99th Air Base Wing at Nellis Air Force Base,the Groom facility appears to be run as an adjunct of the Air Force Flight TestCenter (AFFTC) at Edwards Air ForceBase in the Mojave Desert, around 186 miles(300 km) southwest of Groom, nd as such the base is known as Air ForceFlight Test Center (Detachment 3) Other names used for the facility include Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, HomeBase, Watertown Strip, Groom Lake, and most recently Homey Airport. The area is part of the Nellis MilitaryOperations Area, and the restricted airspace around the field isreferred to as (R-4808N), known by the military pilots in the area as "TheBox."The intense secrecy surrounding the base, the very existence ofwhich the U.S. government barely acknowledges, has led it to become thefrequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component to unidentifiedflying object (UFO)folklore.
GeographyArea 51 shares a border with the Yucca Flat regionof the Nevada Test Site (NTS), the location of 739 of the 928nuclear tests conducted by the UnitedStates Department of Energy atNTS. The YuccaMountain nuclear waste repository isapproximately 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Groom Lake.The same "Area xx"naming scheme is used for other parts of the Nevada Test Site.The area is connected to the internal NTS road network, with pavedroads leading south to Mercury andwest to Yucca Flat. Leading northeast from the lake, the wide andwell-maintained Groom Lake Road runs through a pass in the Jumbled Hills. Theroad formerly led to mines in the Groom basin, but has been improved sincetheir closure. Its winding course runs past a security checkpoint, but therestricted area around the base extends further east. After leaving therestricted area, Groom Lake Road descends eastward to the floor of the TikabooValley, passing the dirt-road entrances to several small ranches, beforeconverging with State Route 375,the "ExtraterrestrialHighway", south ofRachel.

Operations at Groom Lake

Groom Lake is not a conventional airbase, as frontline units arenot normally deployed there. It instead appears to be used during thedevelopment, testing, and training phases for new aircraft. Once these aircrafthave been approved by the United States AirForce or otheragencies such as the CIA,operation of that aircraft is generally conducted from a normal air force base.Groom is reported, however, to be the permanent home for a small number of Soviet-designed aircraft which are analyzed and used fortraining purposes.Soviet spy satellites obtained photographs of the Groom Lake areaduring the height of the Cold War, and later civilian satellites produceddetailed images of the base and its surroundings. These images support onlymodest conclusions about the base; they depict a nondescript base, longairstrip, hangars and the lake, but nothing that supports some of the claimsabout underground facilities.
Though no ICAO identifier for the base appears on anyofficial document, in December 2007, airline pilots noticed that the base hadappeared in their aircraft navigation systems' latest Jeppesen databaserevision as "KXTA".

 

U-2 program

Groom Lake was used for bombing and artillery practice during World War II, but was then abandoned untilApril 1955, when it was selected by Lockheed's Skunk Works teamas the ideal location to test the forthcoming U-2 spyplane. The lakebed made an idealstrip from which they could operate the troublesome test aircraft, and theEmigrant Valley's mountain ranges and the NTS perimeter protected the test sitefrom prying eyes and outside interference.Lockheed constructed a makeshift base at the location, then knownas Site II or "The Ranch", consisting of little more than a fewshelters, workshops and trailer homes in which to house its small team. In onlythree months a 5000-foot runway was constructed and was servicable by July 1955. TheRanch received its first U-2 delivery on July 24, 1955 from Burbank on a C-124 Globemaster II cargo plane, accompanied by Lockheedtechnicians on a Douglas DC-3. The first U-2 lifted off from atGroom on August 4, 1955. A U-2 fleet under the control of the CIA began overflights of Soviet territoryby mid-1956.During this period, the NTS continued to perform a series ofatmospheric nuclear explosions. U-2 operations throughout 1957 were frequentlydisrupted by the Plumbbob series of atomic tests, whichdetonated over two-dozen devices at the NTS. ThePlumbbob-Hood explosion on July 5 scattered fallout acrossGroom and forced a temporary evacuation.

Blackbird programs

Even before U-2 development was complete, Lockheed began work onits successor, the CIA's OXCART project, a Mach-3 high altitudereconnaissance aircraft, a later variant of whichbecame the famed USAF SR-71 Blackbird. The Blackbird's flightcharacteristics and maintenance requirements forced a massive expansion offacilities and runways at Groom Lake. By the time the first A-12 Blackbirdprototype flew at Groom in 1962, the main runway had been lengthened to 8,500ft (2,600 m), and the base boasted a complement of over 1,000 personnel. It hadfueling tanks, a control tower, and a baseball diamond.Security was greatly enhanced, the small civilian mine in the Groom basin wasclosed, and the area surrounding the valley was made an exclusive militarypreserve. Groom saw the first flight of most major Blackbird variants: A-12, the abortive YF-12 interceptorvariant, and the D-21 Blackbird-based drone project. The A-12 would remain atGroom Lake until 1968. (The SR-71 firstflew at Palmdale, California.)

Have Blue/F-117 program

The Lockheed Have Blue prototype stealth fighter (a smallercousin of the F-117 Nighthawk) first flew at Groom inDecember 1977. Testing of aseries of ultra-secret prototypes continued there until mid-1981, when testingtransitioned to the initial production of F-117 stealth fighters. In additionto flight-testing, Groom performed radar profiling, F-117 weapons testing, andwas the location for training of the first group of frontline USAF F-117pilots. Subsequently, the still highly classified active-service F-117operations moved to the nearby Tonopah Test Range,and finally to Holloman Air Force Base
Area51 border and warning sign stating that "photography is prohibited"and that "use of deadly force is authorized" under the terms of the1950 McCarranInternal Security Act. A government vehicle is parked on thehilltop; from there, security agents observe the approach to Groom Lake.Commuter service is provided along Groom Lake Road by a bus,catering to a small number of employees living in several small communitiesbeyond the NTS boundary (although it is not clear whether these workers areemployed at Groom or at other facilities in the NTS). The bus travels GroomLake Road and stops at Crystal Springs, Ash Springs,and Alamo, and parks at the Alamo courthouseovernight.

Runways

The airbase, given the ICAO airport identifier code of KXTA andlisted as "Homey Airport" inaviation GPSdatabases, has seven runways includingone that now appears to be closed. The closed runway, 14R/32L, is also by farthe longest with a total length of approximately 7,100 meters (23,300 ft), notincluding stopway. The other runways are two asphalt runways, the 14L/32R witha length of 3,650 meters (12,000 ft) and 12/30 with a length of 1,650 meters(5,400 ft), and four runways located on the salt lake. These four runways are09L/27R and 09R/27L, which are both approximately 3,500 meters (11,450 ft), and03L/21R and 03R/21L, which are both approximately 3,050 meters (10,000 ft). Thebase also has a helipad.The probably-inadvertent release of the airport dataled to advice by the AircraftOwners and Pilots Association (AOPA)that student pilots should be explicitly warned about KXTA, not to consider itas a waypoint or destination for any flight even though it now appears inpublic navigation databases.

Portrayal in media and popular culture

Popular culture often portrays Area 51 as a haven for extraterrestrials. The numerous conspiracytheories surrounding Area 51 have granted it a fairly high profile in popularculture, specifically in the area of science fiction. Dozens of films andtelevision programs deal with fictionalized events at the site. The followingis list of such media:§  Themost widely seen example is the 1996 actionfilm Independence Day,in which the complex is shown to have been studying the crashed scout ship fromthe Roswell UFO incident of 1947. The heroes of the film latermake their final attack from the airstrips at the base, and in a nod toestablished fact, Randy Quaid's character Russell Casse at onepoint refers to the base not being shown on a state map of Nevada.§  Thetelevision series Seven Days took place largely inside the Area 51complex itself, with the base depicted as being run by a covertNational SecurityAgency (NSA) operationwhich used time travel madepossible by alien technology recovered from the 1947 Roswell incident.§  Lara Croft infiltratesArea 51 in Tomb Raider 3. She must find a specialstone called "Element 115."§  Joanna Dark infiltratesArea 51 in the multi-million selling first person shooter video game Perfect Dark. Her objectives are to meetup with a fellow secret agent, find the autopsy lab of the assumed to be deadalien named Elvis, and to get out successfully.§  Inthe beginning of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,"Hangar 51" is revealed to be the location of the government warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant was stored at the end of Raiders of the LostArk, and where KGB agents go to recover the remains ofthe Roswell alien,eventually revealed to be an interdimensional being with a crystalline skeleton.Writer David Koeppacknowledged the number 51 as areference to popular beliefs about the connection between Roswell and Area 51. §  Inthe television series Stargate SG-1, Area 51 is used as afacility for storage and research of technology brought back to Earth from other planets.§  Inthe Metal Gear series, Area 51 turns out to be one ofthe headquarters of the Illuminati groupknown as The Patriots,who manipulate the government, public, and economy from behind the scenes. Thecharacter Raiden is injured during an attempt to rescue Sunny.§  Inthe comic Superman: Red Son, Abin Sur's body is stored in Area 51 by orderof J. Edgar Hoover. John F. Kennedy later gives Lex Luthoraccess to the base to developweapons to defeat the Soviet Union.§  Forthe finale of the documentary televisionseries UFO Hunters,Season Two, Area 51 was filmed in October 2008. The high definitionfootageaired February 25, 2009 on the History channel.

The Playstation 4... It's Real and Official.

To contact us Click HERE
Image via Kotaku
Well, it's official... Sony has announced the Playstation 4 during their Playstation Meeting 2013 event in New York City. As of this post, the event is actually still ongoing, with Sony and developers giving descriptions, demonstrations, and details on Sony's brand new console since the release of the Playstation 3 on 2006. What's clear is that it will have a big harddrive, an 8GB or RAM, and a Dualshock 4 controller with touchpad feature.

View the Live Stream HERE below, and info and image above are thanks to Kotaku!



Live streaming by UstreamUPDATE: Live streaming is done, and bombshells were delivered with the likes of Blizzard delivering a port of "Diablo III" and Activision partnering with Halo makers Bungie to deliver "Destiny" to PS4 and PS3.Playstation 4 comes out Holiday 2013.

Now its Bebo's turn to be at Madame Tussauds...

To contact us Click HERE

Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor unveiledher wax statue at the Madame Tussauds museum.  

"It is an honour and a privilege for me tohave my own wax figure at Madame Tussauds Blackpool and even more so to launcha global Bollywood exhibition. This is a moment of pride for the Indiancinema," Kareena said. It took four months to create the wax statue,which cost £150,000. 

"The figure looks incredible and is solife-like. I had to do a double take when I saw myself - they have really donea superb job at capturing my essence," she added. 

The unveiling of Kareena's wax figure also flaggedoff a global exhibition, where the statues of Bollywood stars will be taken tosix major cities around the world to be exhibited, before they are brought backto Blackpool in January next year. 

 Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Amitabh Bachchanand Aishwarya Rai too have their wax figures in Tussauds'.

The Devil's Triangle.............

To contact us Click HERE


The BermudaTriangle, also known as the Devil'sTriangle, is a region of the northwestern Atlantic Ocean in which a number of aircraft and surface vessels are alleged to have disappeared. Somepeople have claimed that these disappearances fall beyond the boundaries of human error, equipment failure or natural disasters. Popular culture hasattributed some of these disappearances to theparanormal, a suspension of the laws of physics, or activity by extraterrestrialbeings. Though asubstantial body of documentation exists showing numerous incidents to havebeen inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors, and numerousofficial agencies have gone on record as stating that the number and nature ofdisappearances is similar to any other area of ocean, proponents of paranormalphenomena claim that many have remained unexplained despite considerableinvestigation.
The Triangle AreaThe boundaries of the Triangle vary with the author; some statingits shape is akin to a trapezoid coveringthe Straits of Florida,the Bahamas andthe entire Caribbean islandarea and the Atlantic east to theAzores; others add to itthe Gulf of Mexico. The more familiar triangularboundary in most written works has as its points somewhere on the Atlanticcoast of Florida; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda, with most of the accidentsconcentrated along the southern boundary around the Bahamas and the FloridaStraits.The area is one of the most heavily-sailed shipping lanes in theworld, with ships crossing through it daily for ports in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean Islands. Cruise ships are alsoplentiful, and pleasure craft regularly go back and forth between Florida andthe islands. It is also a heavily flown route for commercial and privateaircraft heading towards Florida, the Caribbean and South America from points north.

History of the Triangle story

Origins

The first article of any kind in which the legend of the Trianglebegan appeared in newspapers by E.V.W. Jones on September 16, 1950, through theAssociated Press. Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea MysteryAt Our Back Door", a short article by George X. Sand covering the loss ofseveral planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a group of five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger bombers on a training mission. Sand'sarticle was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where thelosses took place. Flight 19 alone would be covered in the April 1962 issue of American Legion Magazine. It was claimed that the flight leaderhad been heard saying "We are entering white water, nothing seems right.We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white." It was alsoclaimed that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes"flew off to Mars." This was the first article to connect thesupernatural to Flight 19, but it would take another author, Vincent Gaddis,writing in the February 1964 Argosy magazine to take Flight 19 togetherwith other mysterious disappearances and place it under the umbrella of a newcatchy name: "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle"; he would build on that article with amore detailed book, InvisibleHorizons, the next year. Others would follow with their ownworks: John Wallace Spencer (Limbo of the Lost, 1969, repr. 1973); Charles Berlitz (The Bermuda Triangle, 1974); Richard Winer (The Devil's Triangle, 1974) , and many others, all keeping to someof the same supernatural elements outlined by Eckert.

Kusche's research

Lawrence David Kusche, a research librarian from Arizona State University and author of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery:Solved (1975) has challenged this trend. Kusche's researchrevealed a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies between Berlitz'saccounts and statements from eyewitnesses, participants, and others involved inthe initial incidents. He noted cases where pertinent information wentunreported, such as the disappearance of round-the-world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst, which Berlitz hadpresented as a mystery, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Another examplewas the ore-carrier Berlitz recounted as lost without trace three days out ofan Atlantic port when it had been lost three daysout of a port with the same name in the Pacific Ocean. Kusche also argued that a largepercentage of the incidents which have sparked the Triangle's mysteriousinfluence actually occurred well outside it. Often his research wassurprisingly simple: he would go over period newspapers and see items likeweather reports that were never mentioned in the stories.Kusche came to a conclusion:§  Thenumber of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantlygreater, proportionally speaking, than in any other part of the ocean.§  Inan area frequented by tropicalstorms, the number of disappearances that did occur were, for the most part,neither disproportionate, unlikely, nor mysterious; furthermore, Berlitz andother writers would often fail to mention such storms.§  Thenumbers themselves had been exaggerated by sloppy research. A boat listed asmissing would be reported, but its eventual (if belated) return to port may nothave been reported.§  Somedisappearances had in fact, never happened. One plane crash was said to havetaken place in 1937 off DaytonaBeach, Florida, in front of hundreds of witnesses; a check of the local papersrevealed nothing.Kusche concluded that:The Legend of the Bermuda Triangle isa manufactured mystery… perpetuated by writers who either purposely orunknowingly made use of misconceptions, faulty reasoning, and sensationalism.

Further responsesThe marine insurer Lloyd's of London has determined the Triangle to be nomore dangerous than any other area of ocean, and does not charge unusual ratesfor passage through the region.United StatesCoast Guard recordsconfirm their conclusion. In fact, the number of supposed disappearances isrelatively insignificant considering the number of ships and aircraft whichpass through on a regular basis.The Coast Guard is also officially skeptical of the Triangle,noting that they collect and publish, through their inquiries, muchdocumentation contradicting many of the incidents written about by the Triangleauthors. In one such incident involving the 1972 explosion and sinking of thetanker V.A. Fogg in the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guardphotographed the wreck and recovered several bodies in contrast with oneTriangle author's claim that all the bodies had vanished, with the exception ofthe captain, who was found sitting in his cabin at his desk, clutching a coffeecup.

 

Supernatural explanations

Triangle writers have used a number of supernatural concepts toexplain the events. One explanation pins the blame on leftover technology fromthe mythical lost continent of Atlantis. Sometimes connected to the Atlantisstory is the submerged rock formation known as the Bimini Roadoff the island of Bimini in theBahamas, which is in the Triangle by some definitions. Followers of thepurported psychic Edgar Cayce takehis prediction that evidence of Atlantis would be found in 1968 as referring tothe discovery of the Bimini Road. Believers describe the formationas a road, wall, or other structure, though geologists consider it to be ofnatural origin. Other writers attribute the events to UFOs. This idea was used by Steven Spielberg for his science fiction film CloseEncounters of the Third Kind, which features the lost Flight 19as alien abductees.Charles Berlitz,grandson of a distinguished linguist and author of various additional books onanomalous phenomena, has kept in line with this extraordinary explanation, andattributed the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or unexplained forces. 

 

 Natural explanations

 

      Compass variations

Compass problemsare one of the cited phrases in many Triangle incidents. While some have theorizedthat unusual local magnetic anomalies may exist in the area, such anomalieshave not been shown to exist. It should also be remembered that compasses havenatural magnetic variations in relation to the Magnetic poles. For example, in the United States the only places where magnetic (compass)north and geographic (true) north are exactly the same are on a linerunning from Wisconsin tothe Gulf of Mexico. Navigators have known this forcenturies. But the public may not be as informed, and think there is somethingmysterious about a compass "changing" across an area as large as theTriangle, which it naturally will.Deliberate acts of destructionThis can fall into two categories: acts of war, and acts ofpiracy. Records in enemy files have been checked for numerous losses; whilemany sinkings have been attributed to surface raiders or submarines during the World Wars anddocumented in the various command log books, many others which have beensuspected as falling in that category have not been proven. It is suspectedthat the loss of USS Cyclops in 1918, as well as her sister ships Proteus and Nereus in World War II, were attributed to submarines,but no such link has been found in the German records.Piracy, as defined by the taking of a ship orsmall boat on the high seas, is an act which continues to this day. Whilepiracy for cargo theft is more common in the western Pacific and Indian oceans,drug smugglers do steal pleasure boats for smuggling operations, and may havebeen involved in crew and yacht disappearances in the Caribbean. Historicallyfamous pirates of the Caribbean (where piracy was common from about 1560 to the1760s) include Edward Teach (Blackbeard) and Jean Lafitte. Lafitte is sometimes said to bea Triangle victim himself.Gulf StreamThe Gulf Stream isan ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico, and then through the Straits of Florida,into the North Atlantic. In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and like ariver, it can and does carry floating objects. It has a surface velocity of up toabout 2.5 metres per second (5.6 mph). A small plane making a waterlanding or a boat having engine trouble will be carried away from its reportedposition by the current, as happened to the cabin cruiser Witchcraft on December 22, 1967, when it reportedengine trouble near the Miami buoy marker one mile (1.6 km) from shore, but wasnot there when a Coast Guard cutter arrived.

Humanerror

One of the most cited explanations in official inquiries as to theloss of any aircraft or vessel is human error. Whether deliberate oraccidental, humans have been known to make mistakes resulting in catastrophe,and losses within the Bermuda Triangle are no exception. For example, the CoastGuard cited a lack of proper training for the cleaning of volatile benzene residueas a reason for the loss of the tanker V.A.Fogg in 1972. Humanstubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailingyacht, the Revonoc, as hesailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on January 1, 1958. Manylosses remain inconclusive due to the lack of wreckage which could be studied,a fact cited on many official reports.

Area51

Area 51 is a nickname for a military baselocated in the southern portion of Nevada in thewestern United States (83 miles north-northwest of downtown Las Vegas). Situated at its center, on thesouthern shore of Groom Lake, is a large secretive militaryairfield. The base's primary purpose is to support development and testing ofexperimental aircraft and weapons systems. The base lies within the United States AirForce's vast Nevada Testand Training Range. Although the facilities at the range are managedby the 99th Air Base Wing at Nellis Air Force Base,the Groom facility appears to be run as an adjunct of the Air Force Flight TestCenter (AFFTC) at Edwards Air ForceBase in the Mojave Desert, around 186 miles(300 km) southwest of Groom, nd as such the base is known as Air ForceFlight Test Center (Detachment 3) Other names used for the facility include Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, HomeBase, Watertown Strip, Groom Lake, and most recently Homey Airport. The area is part of the Nellis MilitaryOperations Area, and the restricted airspace around the field isreferred to as (R-4808N), known by the military pilots in the area as "TheBox."The intense secrecy surrounding the base, the very existence ofwhich the U.S. government barely acknowledges, has led it to become thefrequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component to unidentifiedflying object (UFO)folklore.
GeographyArea 51 shares a border with the Yucca Flat regionof the Nevada Test Site (NTS), the location of 739 of the 928nuclear tests conducted by the UnitedStates Department of Energy atNTS. The YuccaMountain nuclear waste repository isapproximately 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Groom Lake.The same "Area xx"naming scheme is used for other parts of the Nevada Test Site.The area is connected to the internal NTS road network, with pavedroads leading south to Mercury andwest to Yucca Flat. Leading northeast from the lake, the wide andwell-maintained Groom Lake Road runs through a pass in the Jumbled Hills. Theroad formerly led to mines in the Groom basin, but has been improved sincetheir closure. Its winding course runs past a security checkpoint, but therestricted area around the base extends further east. After leaving therestricted area, Groom Lake Road descends eastward to the floor of the TikabooValley, passing the dirt-road entrances to several small ranches, beforeconverging with State Route 375,the "ExtraterrestrialHighway", south ofRachel.

Operations at Groom Lake

Groom Lake is not a conventional airbase, as frontline units arenot normally deployed there. It instead appears to be used during thedevelopment, testing, and training phases for new aircraft. Once these aircrafthave been approved by the United States AirForce or otheragencies such as the CIA,operation of that aircraft is generally conducted from a normal air force base.Groom is reported, however, to be the permanent home for a small number of Soviet-designed aircraft which are analyzed and used fortraining purposes.Soviet spy satellites obtained photographs of the Groom Lake areaduring the height of the Cold War, and later civilian satellites produceddetailed images of the base and its surroundings. These images support onlymodest conclusions about the base; they depict a nondescript base, longairstrip, hangars and the lake, but nothing that supports some of the claimsabout underground facilities.
Though no ICAO identifier for the base appears on anyofficial document, in December 2007, airline pilots noticed that the base hadappeared in their aircraft navigation systems' latest Jeppesen databaserevision as "KXTA".

 

U-2 program

Groom Lake was used for bombing and artillery practice during World War II, but was then abandoned untilApril 1955, when it was selected by Lockheed's Skunk Works teamas the ideal location to test the forthcoming U-2 spyplane. The lakebed made an idealstrip from which they could operate the troublesome test aircraft, and theEmigrant Valley's mountain ranges and the NTS perimeter protected the test sitefrom prying eyes and outside interference.Lockheed constructed a makeshift base at the location, then knownas Site II or "The Ranch", consisting of little more than a fewshelters, workshops and trailer homes in which to house its small team. In onlythree months a 5000-foot runway was constructed and was servicable by July 1955. TheRanch received its first U-2 delivery on July 24, 1955 from Burbank on a C-124 Globemaster II cargo plane, accompanied by Lockheedtechnicians on a Douglas DC-3. The first U-2 lifted off from atGroom on August 4, 1955. A U-2 fleet under the control of the CIA began overflights of Soviet territoryby mid-1956.During this period, the NTS continued to perform a series ofatmospheric nuclear explosions. U-2 operations throughout 1957 were frequentlydisrupted by the Plumbbob series of atomic tests, whichdetonated over two-dozen devices at the NTS. ThePlumbbob-Hood explosion on July 5 scattered fallout acrossGroom and forced a temporary evacuation.

Blackbird programs

Even before U-2 development was complete, Lockheed began work onits successor, the CIA's OXCART project, a Mach-3 high altitudereconnaissance aircraft, a later variant of whichbecame the famed USAF SR-71 Blackbird. The Blackbird's flightcharacteristics and maintenance requirements forced a massive expansion offacilities and runways at Groom Lake. By the time the first A-12 Blackbirdprototype flew at Groom in 1962, the main runway had been lengthened to 8,500ft (2,600 m), and the base boasted a complement of over 1,000 personnel. It hadfueling tanks, a control tower, and a baseball diamond.Security was greatly enhanced, the small civilian mine in the Groom basin wasclosed, and the area surrounding the valley was made an exclusive militarypreserve. Groom saw the first flight of most major Blackbird variants: A-12, the abortive YF-12 interceptorvariant, and the D-21 Blackbird-based drone project. The A-12 would remain atGroom Lake until 1968. (The SR-71 firstflew at Palmdale, California.)

Have Blue/F-117 program

The Lockheed Have Blue prototype stealth fighter (a smallercousin of the F-117 Nighthawk) first flew at Groom inDecember 1977. Testing of aseries of ultra-secret prototypes continued there until mid-1981, when testingtransitioned to the initial production of F-117 stealth fighters. In additionto flight-testing, Groom performed radar profiling, F-117 weapons testing, andwas the location for training of the first group of frontline USAF F-117pilots. Subsequently, the still highly classified active-service F-117operations moved to the nearby Tonopah Test Range,and finally to Holloman Air Force Base
Area51 border and warning sign stating that "photography is prohibited"and that "use of deadly force is authorized" under the terms of the1950 McCarranInternal Security Act. A government vehicle is parked on thehilltop; from there, security agents observe the approach to Groom Lake.Commuter service is provided along Groom Lake Road by a bus,catering to a small number of employees living in several small communitiesbeyond the NTS boundary (although it is not clear whether these workers areemployed at Groom or at other facilities in the NTS). The bus travels GroomLake Road and stops at Crystal Springs, Ash Springs,and Alamo, and parks at the Alamo courthouseovernight.

Runways

The airbase, given the ICAO airport identifier code of KXTA andlisted as "Homey Airport" inaviation GPSdatabases, has seven runways includingone that now appears to be closed. The closed runway, 14R/32L, is also by farthe longest with a total length of approximately 7,100 meters (23,300 ft), notincluding stopway. The other runways are two asphalt runways, the 14L/32R witha length of 3,650 meters (12,000 ft) and 12/30 with a length of 1,650 meters(5,400 ft), and four runways located on the salt lake. These four runways are09L/27R and 09R/27L, which are both approximately 3,500 meters (11,450 ft), and03L/21R and 03R/21L, which are both approximately 3,050 meters (10,000 ft). Thebase also has a helipad.The probably-inadvertent release of the airport dataled to advice by the AircraftOwners and Pilots Association (AOPA)that student pilots should be explicitly warned about KXTA, not to consider itas a waypoint or destination for any flight even though it now appears inpublic navigation databases.

Portrayal in media and popular culture

Popular culture often portrays Area 51 as a haven for extraterrestrials. The numerous conspiracytheories surrounding Area 51 have granted it a fairly high profile in popularculture, specifically in the area of science fiction. Dozens of films andtelevision programs deal with fictionalized events at the site. The followingis list of such media:§  Themost widely seen example is the 1996 actionfilm Independence Day,in which the complex is shown to have been studying the crashed scout ship fromthe Roswell UFO incident of 1947. The heroes of the film latermake their final attack from the airstrips at the base, and in a nod toestablished fact, Randy Quaid's character Russell Casse at onepoint refers to the base not being shown on a state map of Nevada.§  Thetelevision series Seven Days took place largely inside the Area 51complex itself, with the base depicted as being run by a covertNational SecurityAgency (NSA) operationwhich used time travel madepossible by alien technology recovered from the 1947 Roswell incident.§  Lara Croft infiltratesArea 51 in Tomb Raider 3. She must find a specialstone called "Element 115."§  Joanna Dark infiltratesArea 51 in the multi-million selling first person shooter video game Perfect Dark. Her objectives are to meetup with a fellow secret agent, find the autopsy lab of the assumed to be deadalien named Elvis, and to get out successfully.§  Inthe beginning of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,"Hangar 51" is revealed to be the location of the government warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant was stored at the end of Raiders of the LostArk, and where KGB agents go to recover the remains ofthe Roswell alien,eventually revealed to be an interdimensional being with a crystalline skeleton.Writer David Koeppacknowledged the number 51 as areference to popular beliefs about the connection between Roswell and Area 51. §  Inthe television series Stargate SG-1, Area 51 is used as afacility for storage and research of technology brought back to Earth from other planets.§  Inthe Metal Gear series, Area 51 turns out to be one ofthe headquarters of the Illuminati groupknown as The Patriots,who manipulate the government, public, and economy from behind the scenes. Thecharacter Raiden is injured during an attempt to rescue Sunny.§  Inthe comic Superman: Red Son, Abin Sur's body is stored in Area 51 by orderof J. Edgar Hoover. John F. Kennedy later gives Lex Luthoraccess to the base to developweapons to defeat the Soviet Union.§  Forthe finale of the documentary televisionseries UFO Hunters,Season Two, Area 51 was filmed in October 2008. The high definitionfootageaired February 25, 2009 on the History channel.