Que se passe-t-il vraiment au fond du triangle des Bermudes ?

The legend of the Bermuda Triangle is one of the rare mysteries that we still can't solve. Let's go back 600 years. The story begins with an Italian. He wanted to cross the ocean to reach Asia, a continent rich in spices, silk, minerals, all these wonders. The arrival by land was ridiculously long, so he said to himself, Hey, why not build solid boats, gather a few sailors and go to Asia? What could go wrong? In fact, this man was called Christophe Colomb. In 1492, with a little help from the Spanish royal family, he embarked on his great journey. Everything was going well, except for the fact that he was going in the wrong direction. But as he arrived at the end of his journey, he noticed something very strange. He didn't know it at the time, but he was sailing in the infamous Bermuda Triangle. The TB. The point of no return. The most frightening place between the Bermudas of Puerto Rico and Florida. There are many stories of boats, shipwrecks and planes that have disappeared in this mysterious kingdom. Some were found years later, and others disappeared from the surface of the earth, gazing at the bottom of the ocean without being discovered. Well, we don't know. Because one thing is for sure, we have absolutely no idea what's going on there. People have been trying to understand for years, but nothing, zero, nothing. So, what did Christophe Colomb see that night? What scared him so much? According to these newspaper reports, Christophe Colomb saw a huge flash in the sky. You may be a super-hard-to-cook, but, well, if you sail without any idea of ​​killing and suddenly you see a huge flash right in front of you, what do you do? I would find myself hidden under the bridge, chewing a lemon or whatever. This is not the only mystery of the seas that exist, far from it. Have you ever heard of Kraken? A giant squid that can swallow an entire ship. No? You're lucky. Imagine that you are sailing on a boat, the wind in your hair, hands on your hips, like in those old pirate movies. And then a huge squid appears in front of you, coming from the cold and dark waters of the depths. It rolls its tentacles around the ship and carries everything to the bottom of the ocean. Fortunately, you brought a life raft. And what would you say about a colossal sea snake that would chase your boat at full speed in search of a snack for your breakfast? This thing is called a leviathan, and you'd better pray that it doesn't really exist. Or mermaids. Evil but beautiful sea creatures. They like to drag on the rocks and sing karaoke. Their magical voice attracts sailors, who sail directly to the pointed rocks. Oh yes, there are also nice mermaids, those who are great, who also like karaoke, but do not make ships sink. The good old mermaids, they really exist, don't they? And let's not forget the pirates with wooden legs. By the way, apart from that, what are these guys doing all day? Let's go back to our Italian friend, Christophe Colomb. Maybe he just saw a storm. Why didn't he think about it? Well, I'm not 600 years old and I wasn't there. How could I know? What's weird is that he never talked about huge waves or heavy rain, or violent winds. Just a simple lightning in the sky. Maybe dolphins throwing fireworks, or something like that. After the lightning, Christophe Colomb wrote that the needle of his compass started to dance everywhere. It's getting weirder and weirder. His story ends with a nice turtle with sunglasses, who jumped out of the water, pushed the three boats to the shore, and allowed everyone to go down to buy hot dogs. I'm kidding. So what happened? Scientists now think they have the answer. Drum roll. An asteroid crashed into the ocean. Classified case. But wait. What about the compass? What's the connection with an asteroid? Asteroids have different shapes and sizes, but they're like chocolate eggs. The best is inside. They're filled with minerals and metals worth billions of dollars. Scientists are even trying to figure out how to land on a big asteroid to exploit it. It would have to be a very big asteroid, something like the size of Rhode Island. Why? Because there's a good chance it's surrounded by a magnetic field, which would make landing easier. Scientists think that magnetic fields around certain asteroids can last millions of years. Mystery solved. Maybe. Captain Christophe Colomb's compass went crazy because of an asteroid that crashed right in front of him. OK. This could explain other strange stories about Bermudas. About a hundred years ago, the USS Cyclops left Barbados for Baltimore and crossed the Bermuda Triangle in the middle. It never made it to its destination. Research teams spent years looking for it, but they couldn't find it. It just disappeared like that. In 1945, five military aircraft disappeared without a trace. They had just flown over the Bermuda Triangle. So if there's an asteroid at the bottom of the sea somewhere, why is it still causing problems 500 years later? The journey began like any other. The cargo ship SS Cotopaxi embarked on a new crossing to Havana, Cuba, to deliver coal. It was November 29, 1925, but for Captain Mayer and his crew, the departure from the port of Charleston in South Carolina would be the beginning of the last voyage of the ship. Its itinerary went through the Bermuda Triangle. Two days after embarking, the Cotopaxi sent a distress signal. It was caught in a strong tropical storm and overturned on the side. The wind was very strong and there were also powerful lightning. The rain gradually filled the ship's hull. Then there was a white light and the ship disappeared without a trace. Later, its wreck was found in the Gobi Desert, which is located in a completely different part of the world. The 32 crew members, including the captain, were carried away and disappeared. Of course, the part about the Gobi Desert is fictional, but for one of his films, Steven Spielberg had the idea to have the ship moved by aliens. However, in reality, the ship was never found and its crew really left no trace. It was officially declared missing a month later and no one found the wreck. This seems to be a classic case of mysterious events that occur in the Bermuda Triangle, but most mysteries are solved sooner or later. In 2020, the Cotopaxi was indeed found. A man named Michael Barnett settled in Florida to study wrecks off the coast. A particular wreck caught his attention. It was much bigger than the others and the locals nicknamed it the Bear Wreck. It was located about 60 km from St. Augustine, in northern Florida. But no one had ever managed to identify the rusted hull. So Michael started doing detective work. He measured the size of the wreck and started working on all the information he could find. He did research in hundreds of old newspapers, looked through insurance documents and examined the artifacts found on the wreck. After hundreds of hours of hard work, Michael was now convinced. It was the Cotopaxi. But a few years earlier, a rumor had circulated that this same ship had been found off the coast of Cuba. Coast guards had found the wreck of a cargo ship of the same size that looked a lot like the one that had been lost in 1925. Michael was convinced he was wrong. So he joined scientists and continued to investigate. Soon, they discovered something that seemed to confirm Michael's theory. Divers found brass valves with the letters SV in the wreck of the ship. Michael suggested that these initials referred to the Scott Valve Manufacturing Company. The headquarters of this company was in Michigan, not far from where the Cotopaxi had been built. The company had probably provided parts for the Cotopaxi. The riddle seemed to be solved. The wreck of the Cotopaxi was in fact the missing cargo ship. But Michael still had to find out why the ship had sunk. Did something mysterious really happen to the Cotopaxi in the Bermuda Triangle? Later, Michael found the witness of the ship's carpenter among old papers. The carpenter claimed that the equipment covering the ship's coal was in a disastrous state before the shipwreck. The repair work on the panels was not finished until the crew received the order to leave for Cuba. So if the panels were still damaged during the trip, the water could have easily infiltrated the ship. This water probably flooded the hull during the tropical storm. This is probably the real reason why the Cotopaxi sank. There was really no mystery in this, just a mistake made by ordinary people. This is just one example among dozens, even hundreds of ships and planes missing in the Bermuda Triangle. We still haven't explained some of these incidents. One of these strange events happened in 1948. A airliner was heading to Miami from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It disappeared in the same area as the Cotopaxi. The 30 people on board disappeared without a trace. The sky was clear during the entire flight, but experts think that when the plane was about 75 km from the coast, it could have been hit by a strong wind that made it deviate from its trajectory. Years later, a similar plane was found in the Bermuda Triangle. But since no one was able to register it, it was impossible to say with certainty if it was the same airliner. An even stranger event happened shortly before, in 1945. Five planes disappeared at the same time. Intern pilots were practicing navigation, but when they finished, it seemed that they couldn't find their way and that they had disappeared. Many people think that they had a fuel breakdown. It seems likely, but the circumstances were very strange. The interns were supervised by an experienced pilot who had 2,500 hours of flight to his name. He would never have let a group of beginners fly so far from their base. Even today, people debate what could have happened. Some insist that the pilots encountered something supernatural in the Bermuda Triangle. But who knows?