Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraftand surface vessels are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Popular culture has attributed these disappearances to theparanormal or activity by extraterrestrial beings. Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the incidents were spurious, inaccurately reported, or embellished by later authors. Contrary to popular belief, insurance companies don't charge higher rates for passage through this area.

Origins

The earliest allegation of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 16, 1950 Associated Press article by Edward Van Winkle Jones. Two years later, Fatemagazine published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door", a short article by George X. Sand covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a group of five U.S. NavyTBM Avenger 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 in the April 1962 issue of American Legion Magazine. It was claimed 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." It was also claimed 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 the February 1964 issue of Argosy, Vincent Gaddis's article "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" argued that 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.

Others would follow with their own works, elaborating on Gaddis's ideas: 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 some of the same supernatural elements outlined by Eckert.

Supernatural explanations

Triangle writers have used a number of supernatural concepts to explain the events. One explanation pins the blame on leftover technology from 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. Followers of the purported psychic Edgar Cayce take his prediction that evidence of Atlantis would be found in 1968 as referring to the discovery of the Bimini Road. Believers describe the formation as a road, wall, or other structure, though geologists consider it to be of natural origin.

Other writers attribute the events to UFOs. This idea was used by Steven Spielberg for his science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which features the lost Flight 19 aircrews asalien abductees.

Charles Berlitz, author of various books on anomalous phenomena, lists several theories attributing the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or unexplained forces.

Egyptian pyramids

The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt.

There are 138 pyramids discovered in Egypt as of 2008. Most were built as tombs for the country's Pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods.

The earliest known Egyptian pyramids are found at Saqqara, northwest of Memphis. The earliest among these is the Pyramid of Djoser(constructed 2630 BCE–2611 BCE) which was built during the third dynasty. This pyramid and its surrounding complex were designed by the architect Imhotep, and are generally considered to be the world's oldest monumental structures constructed of dressed masonry.

The estimate of the number of workers to build the pyramids range from a few thousand, twenty thousand, and up to 100,000.

The most famous Egyptian pyramids are those found at Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo. Several of the Giza pyramids are counted among the largest structures ever built.

The Pyramid of Khufu at Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid. It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence.

By the time of the early dynastic period of Egyptian history, those with sufficient means were buried in bench-like structures known asmastabas.

The second historically documented Egyptian pyramid is attributed to the architect Imhotep, who planned what Egyptologists believe to be a tomb for the pharaoh Djoser. Imhotep is credited with being the first to conceive the notion of stacking mastabas on top of each other – creating an edifice composed of a number of "steps" that decreased in size towards its apex. The result was the Step Pyramid of Djoser – which was designed to serve as a gigantic stairway by which the soul of the deceased pharaoh could ascend to the heavens. Such was the importance of Imhotep's achievement that he was deified by later Egyptians.

The most prolific pyramid-building phase coincided with the greatest degree of absolutist pharaonic rule. It was during this time that the most famous pyramids, those near Giza, were built. Over time, as authority became less centralized, the ability and willingness to harness the resources required for construction on a massive scale decreased, and later pyramids were smaller, less well-built and often hastily constructed.

Long after the end of Egypt's own pyramid-building period, a burst of pyramid-building occurred in what is present-day Sudan, after much of Egypt came under the rule of the Kings of Napata. While Napatan rule was brief and ceased in 661 BC, the Egyptian influence made an indelible impression, and during the later Sudanese Kingdom of Meroe (approximately in the period between 300 BC–300 AD) this flowered into a full-blown pyramid-building revival, which saw more than two hundred indigenous, but Egyptian-inspired royal pyramid-tombs constructed in the vicinity of the kingdom's capital cities.

Al-Aziz Uthman, son of the great Saladin who crushed the Crusaders, tried to demolish the Great pyramids of Giza, but had to give up because the task was too big. However, he did succeed in damaging Menkaure's pyramid

AREA 51

Area 51 is a military base, and a remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base. It is located in the southern portion of Nevada in the western United States, 83 miles (133 km) north-northwest of Las Vegas. Situated at its center, on the southern shore of Groom Lake, is a large military airfield. The base's primary purpose is undetermined; however, based on historical evidence, it appears to support development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems

The Area 51 base lies within the United States Air Force's vast Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), formerly called the Nellis Air Force Range (NAFR). Although the facilities at the range are managed by the 99th Air Base Wing at Nellis Air Force Base, the Groom facility appears to be run as an adjunct of the Air Materiel Command Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC) at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, around 186 miles (300 km) southwest of Groom, and as such the base is known as Air Force Flight Test Center (Detachment 3).^[3][4]

Though the name Area 51 is used in official Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documentation,^[5] other names used for the facility includeDreamland, Paradise Ranch,^[6][7] Home Base, Watertown Strip, Groom Lake,^[8] and most recently Homey Airport.^[9] The area is part of the NellisMilitary Operations Area, and the restricted airspace around the field is referred to as (R-4808N),^[10] known by the military pilots in the area as "The Box" or "the Container".^[11]

The facility is not a conventional airbase, as frontline operational units are not normally deployed there. It instead appears to be used for highly classified military/defense Special Access Programs (SAP), which are unacknowledged publicly by the government, military personnel, and defense contractors. Its mission may be to support the development, testing, and training phases for new aircraft weapons systems or research projects. Once these projects have been approved by the United States Air Force or other agencies such as the CIA, and are ready to be announced to the public, operations of the aircraft are then moved to a normal air force base.

The intense secrecy surrounding the base, whose very existence the U.S. government did not even acknowledge until 29 September 1995, has made it the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component to unidentified flying object (UFO) folklore.^[7][12] Everything that happens at Area 51 is classified Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI). This security policy ensures that only those insiders with a "need to know" have access to only the information they require, and ensures that outsiders don't know what they don't know.

X-15 program

In July 1959 USAF personnel from Edwards AFB embarked on a two-day survey trip to investigate potential emergency landing sites for the North American X-15 rocket plane. The survey crew received permission to land on the then unused CIA facility at Groom Lake. The crew tested the hardness of the lakebed surface by dropping a 10-pound steel ball from a height of six feet and measuring the diameter of the resulting imprint. The result was that the Groom Lake surface was considered excellent for emergency use.^[1]

In September 1960, NASA and Air Force Flight Test Center personnel at Edwards reviewed the results of the survey trip to Groom Lake, as well as other sites visited by the survey crew. The use of Groom Lake meant a reduction in support requirements as there was an airfield with emergency equipment and personnel at the site. Ultimately, they agreed to remove Groom from consideration as an emergency landing site due to difficulty obtaining clearance into the area