is the garden of eden in the bermuda triangle?

Answer 1

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, but the Bimini Road is of natural origin.Other writers attribute the events to UFOs. Charles Berlitz, author of various books on anomalous phenomena, lists several theories attributing the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or unexplained forces. 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 – for example, as of 2000, in the United States, only those places on a line running from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. 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. Gulf Stream The Gulf Stream is a major surface current, primarily driven by thermohaline circulation that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and then flows through the Straits of Florida into the North Atlantic. In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and, like a river, it can and does carry floating objects. It has a maximum surface velocity of about 2 m/s (6.6 ft/s). A small plane making a water landing or a boat having engine trouble can be carried away from its reported position by the current. Human error One of the most cited explanations in official inquiries as to the loss of any aircraft or vessel is human error. Human stubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailing yacht, Revonoc, as he sailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on January 1, 1958. Violent weather Hurricanes are powerful storms that form in tropical waters and have historically cost thousands of lives and caused billions of dollars in damage. The sinking of Francisco de Bobadilla's Spanish fleet in 1502 was the first recorded instance of a destructive hurricane. These storms have in the past caused a number of incidents related to the Triangle. A powerful downdraft of cold air was suspected to be a cause in the sinking of Pride of Baltimore on May 14, 1986. The crew of the sunken vessel noted the wind suddenly shifted and increased velocity from 32 km/h (20 mph) to 97–145 km/h (60–90 mph). A National Hurricane Center satellite specialist, James Lushine, stated "during very unstable weather conditions the downburst of cold air from aloft can hit the surface like a bomb, exploding outward like a giant squall line of wind and water." A similar event occurred to Concordia in 2010, off the coast of Brazil. Scientists are currently investigating whether "hexagonal" clouds may be the source of these up-to-170 mph (270 km/h) "air bombs". Methane hydrates An explanation for some of the disappearances has focused on the presence of large fields of methane hydrates (a form of natural gas) on the continental shelves. Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles can, indeed, sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of the water; any wreckage consequently rising to the surface would be rapidly dispersed by the Gulf Stream. It has been hypothesized that periodic methane eruptions (sometimes called "mud volcanoes") may produce regions of frothy water that are no longer capable of providing adequate buoyancy for ships. If this were the case, such an area forming around a ship could cause it to sink very rapidly and without warning. Publications by the USGS describe large stores of undersea hydrates worldwide, including the Blake Ridge area, off the coast of the southeastern United States. However, according to the USGS, no large releases of gas hydrates are believed to have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle for the past 15,000 years. The incident resulting in the single largest loss of life in the history of the US Navy not related to combat occurred when the collier Cyclops, carrying a full load of manganese ore and with one engine out of action, went missing without a trace with a crew of 309 sometime after March 4, 1918, after departing the island of Barbados. Although there is no strong evidence for any single theory, many independent theories exist, some blaming storms, some capsizing, and some suggesting that wartime enemy activity was to blame for the loss. In addition, two of Cyclops's sister ships, Proteus and Nereus were subsequently lost in the North Atlantic during World War II. Both ships were transporting heavy loads of metallic ore similar to that which was loaded on Cyclops during her fatal voyage. In all three cases structural failure due to overloading with a much denser cargo than designed is considered the most likely cause of sinking. A five-masted schooner built in 1919, Carroll A. Deering was found hard aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals, near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on January 31, 1921. Rumors and more at the time indicated Deering was a victim of piracy, possibly connected with the illegal rum-running trade during Prohibition, and possibly involving another ship, Hewitt, which disappeared at roughly the same time. Just hours later, an unknown steamer sailed near the lightship along the track of Deering, and ignored all signals from the lightship. It is speculated that Hewitt may have been this mystery ship, and possibly involved in Deering's crew disappearance. Flight 19 was a training flight of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared on December 5, 1945, while over the Atlantic. The squadron's flight plan was scheduled to take them due east from Fort Lauderdale for 141 mi (227 km), north for 73 mi (117 km), and then back over a final 140-mile (230-kilometre) leg to complete the exercise. The flight never returned to base. The disappearance was attributed by Navy investigators to navigational error leading to the aircraft running out of fuel. One of the search and rescue aircraft deployed to look for them, a PBM Mariner with a 13-man crew, also disappeared. A tanker off the coast of Florida reported seeing an explosion and observing a widespread oil slick when fruitlessly searching for survivors. The weather was becoming stormy by the end of the incident. According to contemporaneous sources the Mariner had a history of explosions due to vapour leaks when heavily loaded with fuel, as it might have been for a potentially long search-and-rescue operation. G-AHNP Star Tiger disappeared on January 30, 1948, on a flight from the Azores to Bermuda; G-AGRE Star Ariel disappeared on January 17, 1949, on a flight from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica. Both were Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft operated by British South American Airways. Both planes were operating at the very limits of their range and the slightest error or fault in the equipment could keep them from reaching the small island. On December 28, 1948, a Douglas DC-3 aircraft, number NC16002, disappeared while on a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami. No trace of the aircraft, or the 32 people on board, was ever found. A Civil Aeronautics Board investigation found there was insufficient information available on which to determine probable cause of the disappearance. A pleasure yacht was found adrift in the Atlantic south of Bermuda on September 26, 1955; it is usually stated in the stories (Berlitz, Winer) that the crew vanished while the yacht survived being at sea during three hurricanes. The 1955 Atlantic hurricane season shows Hurricane Ione passing nearby between 14 and 18 September, with Bermuda being affected by winds of almost gale force. In his second book on the Bermuda Triangle, Winer quoted from a letter he had received from Mr J.E. Challenor of Barbados: On the morning of September 22, Connemara IV was lying to a heavy mooring in the open roadstead of Carlisle Bay. Because of the approaching hurricane, the owner strengthened the mooring ropes and put out two additional anchors. There was little else he could do, as the exposed mooring was the only available anchorage. ... In Carlisle Bay, the sea in the wake of Hurricane Janet was awe-inspiring and dangerous. The owner of Connemara IV observed that she had disappeared. An investigation revealed that she had dragged her moorings and gone to sea. On August 28, 1963, a pair of US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft collided and crashed into the Atlantic 300 miles west of Bermuda. Some writers say that while the two aircraft did collide there were two distinct crash sites, separated by over 160 miles (260 km) of water. However, Kusche's research showed that the unclassified version of the Air Force investigation report revealed that the debris field defining the second "crash site" was examined by a search and rescue ship, and found to be a mass of seaweed and driftwood tangled in an old buoy. Bermuda (; in full, The Somers Isles, or Islands of Bermuda) is a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. It is approximately 1,035 km (643 mi) east-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina (with Cape Point on Hatteras Island being the nearest landfall); 1,236 km (768 mi) south of Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia; 1,759 km (1,093 mi) northeast of Cuba, and 1,538 km (956 mi) due north of the British Virgin Islands. Though it is typically referred to in the singular, Bermuda consists of 181 islands; the largest of these islands is known as Main Island. The capital city of Bermuda is Hamilton. Bermuda is internally self-governing, with its own constitution and cabinet of ministers selected from the elected Members of the lower house of a Parliament that enacts local laws. As the national government, the Government of the United Kingdom is ultimately responsible for ensuring good governance within British Overseas Territories, and retains responsibility for defence and foreign relations. As of July 2018, it has a population of 71,176, making it the most populous of the British overseas territories. Bermuda's largest industries are offshore insurance, reinsurance, and tourism. Bermuda had one of the world's highest GDP per capita for most of the 20th century.Bermuda's climate is usually described as subtropical, primarily due to the chilly but generally mild winter temperatures. Unlike other areas designated as subtropical, summers are also quite mild, with temperatures not rising in most years above 30 °C (86 °F) during the hottest months of July and August. Its climate also exhibits oceanic features similar to other oceanic islands and the western coasts of continents in the Northern Hemisphere: mean wind direction is from the west and carries warm, moist air from the ocean, ensuring relatively high humidity and stabilising temperature. Bermuda lies in Hurricane Alley and is thus prone to severe weather; however, it receives some protection from a coral reef and its position at the north of the belt, which limits the direction and severity of approaching storms. Bermuda is named after the Spanish sailor Juan de Bermúdez, who discovered the islands in 1505.An early appearance of the name in English literature is in Shakespeare's The Tempest, a play which was inspired by the wreck of the Sea Venture, though not set on the islands: John Donne's poem The Storm uses the same idea: Bermuda was discovered in the early 1500s by Spanish explorer Juan de Bermúdez. Bermuda had no indigenous population at the time of its discovery, nor at the time of the initial British settlement a century later. It was mentioned in Legatio Babylonica, published in 1511 by historian Pedro Mártir de Anglería, and was also included on Spanish charts of that year. Both Spanish and Portuguese ships used the islands as a replenishment spot to take on fresh meat and water; for example, shipwrecked Portuguese mariners are now thought to have been responsible for the 1543 inscription on Portuguese Rock (previously called Spanish Rock). Legends arose of spirits and devils, now thought to have stemmed from the calls of raucous birds (most likely the Bermuda petrel, or cahow) and the loud noise heard at night from wild hogs. Combined with the frequent storm-wracked conditions and the dangerous reefs, the archipelago became known as the 'Isle of Devils'. Neither Spain nor Portugal attempted to settle it. For the next century, the island is believed to have been visited frequently, but not settled. The English had by this time started to take an interest in the New World, initially attempting to settle in Virginia in what is now the eastern United States. After the failure of the first two English colonies there, a more determined effort was initiated by King James I of England, who granted a Royal Charter to the Virginia Company which established a colony at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. Two years later, a flotilla of seven ships left England under the company's admiral, Sir George Somers, and the new governor of Jamestown, Sir Thomas Gates, with several hundred settlers, food and supplies to relieve the colony of Jamestown. However the flotilla was broken up by a storm; as the flagship, Sea Venture, was taking on water, Somers drove it onto Bermuda's reef and reached the shores safely with smaller boats – all 150 passengers and a dog survived. (William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, in which the character Ariel refers to the "still-vex'd Bermoothes" (I.ii.229), is thought to have been inspired by William Strachey's account of this shipwreck.) They stayed 10 months, starting a new settlement and building two small ships, the Deliverance and the Patience, to sail on to Jamestown. Bermuda was claimed for the English Crown, and the charter of the Virginia Company was later extended to include it. On 10 May 1610, all but two of the remaining survivors of Sea Venture sailed on to Jamestown (excluding those who had died or been killed on Bermuda, or the crew of the Sea Venture's longboat, sent under Henry Ravens to Virginia a month after the wreck of the Sea Venture, none of whom were seen again; but including children born in Bermuda). Among them was John Rolfe, whose wife and child died and were buried in Bermuda. Somers returned to Bermuda with the Patience to obtain food for the starving settlers of Jamestown but died in Bermuda; the Patience sailed instead for England, leaving a third man with the two who had remained behind in May. In 1612, the English began the intentional settlement of the archipelago, officially named Virgineola, with the arrival of the ship the Plough. New London (soon renamed St. George's Town) was settled that year and designated as the colony's first capital. It is the oldest continually inhabited English town in the New World.In 1615, the colony, which had been renamed the Somers Isles in commemoration of Sir George Somers, was passed on to a new company, the Somers Isles Company. As Bermudians settled the Carolina Colony and contributed to the establishment of other English colonies in the Americas, several other locations were named after the archipelago. During this period the first enslaved people were held against their will and trafficked to the islands. These were a mixture of enslaved Africans who were trafficked to the Americas via the African slave trade and Native Americans who were enslaved from the Thirteen Colonies.The archipelago's limited land area and resources led to the creation of what may be the earliest conservation laws of the New World. In 1616 and 1620 acts were passed banning the hunting of certain birds and young tortoises. In 1649, the English Civil War was in its seventh year and King Charles I was beheaded in Whitehall, London. The conflict spilled over into Bermuda, where the majority of the colonists developed a strong sense of devotion to the Crown. The royalists ousted the Somers Isles Company's Governor, Captain Thomas Turner, and elected John Trimingham as their leader. Bermuda's civil war was ended by militias, and dissenters such as Puritans and Independents were pushed to settle The Bahamas under William Sayle.The rebellious royalist colonies of Bermuda and Virginia, as well as Barbados and Antigua, were the subjects of an Act of the Rump Parliament of England that was essentially a declaration of war: [W]hereas divers acts of Rebellion have been committed by many persons inhabiting in Barbada's, Antego, Bermuda's and Virginia, whereby they have most Trayterously, by Force and Subtilty, usurped a Power of Government, and seized the Estates of many well-affected persons into their hands, and banished others, and have set up themselves in opposition to, and distinct from this State and Commonwealth, . . . the Parliament of England taking the premises into consideration, and finding themselves obliged to use all speedy, lawful and just means for the Suppression of the said Rebellion in the said Plantations, and reducing the same to fidelity and due obedience, so as all peaceable and well-affected people, who have been Robbed, Spoiled, Imprisoned or Banished through the said Treasonable practices, may be restored to the freedom of their persons, and possession of their own Lands and Goods, and due punishment inflicted upon the said Delinquents, do Declare all and every the said persons in Barbada's, Antego, Bermuda's and Virginia, that have contrived, abetted, aided or assisted those horrid Rebellions, or have since willingly joyned with them, to be notorious Robbers and Traitors, and such as by the Law of Nations are not to be permitted any maner of Commerce or Traffique with any people whatsoever; and do forbid to all maner of persons, Foreiners, and others, all maner of Commerce, Traffique and Correspondency whatsoever, to be used or held with the said Rebels in the Barbada's, Bermuda's, Virginia and Antego, or either of them. The royalist colonies were also threatened with invasion. The Government of Bermuda eventually reached an agreement with the Parliamentarians in England which left the status quo in Bermuda. In the 17th century, the Somers Isles Company suppressed shipbuilding, as it needed Bermudians to farm in order for it to generate income from the land. The colony of Virginia far surpassed Bermuda in both quality and quantity of tobacco produced. Bermudians began to turn to maritime trades relatively early in the 17th century, but the Somers Isles Company used all its authority to suppress turning away from agriculture. This interference led to the islanders demanding, and receiving, the revocation of the company's charter in 1684, and the company was dissolved.Bermudians rapidly abandoned agriculture for shipbuilding, replanting farmland with the native juniper (Juniperus bermudiana, called Bermuda cedar) trees that grew thickly over the entire island. Establishing effective control over the Turks Islands, Bermudians deforested their landscape to begin the salt trade. It became the world's largest and remained the cornerstone of Bermuda's economy for the next century. Bermudians also vigorously pursued whaling, privateering, and the merchant trade.The Bermuda sloop became highly regarded for its speed and manoeuvrability, and was soon adapted for service with the Royal Navy. The Bermuda sloop HMS Pickle carried dispatches of the victory at Trafalgar, and news of the death of Admiral Nelson, to England. Bermuda's ambivalence towards the American rebellion changed in September 1774, when the Continental Congress resolved to ban trade with Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies after 10 September 1775. Such an embargo would mean the collapse of their intercolonial commerce, famine and civil unrest. Lacking political channels with Great Britain, the Tucker Family met in May 1775 with eight other parishioners, and resolved to send delegates to the Continental Congress in July, with the goal of an exemption from the ban. Henry Tucker noted a clause in the ban which allowed the exchange of American goods for military supplies. The clause was confirmed by Benjamin Franklin when Tucker met with the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety. Independently, Tucker's sons St. George and Thomas Tudor confirmed this business arrangement with Peyton Randolph and the Charlestown Committee of Safety, while another Bermudian, Harris, did so with George Washington.Three American vessels, independently operating from Charlestown, Philadelphia and Newport, sailed to Bermuda, and on 14 August 1775, 100 barrels of gunpowder were taken from the Bermudian magazine, while Governor George James Bruere slept, and loaded onto these vessels. As a consequence, on 2 October the Continental Congress exempted Bermuda from their trade ban, and Bermuda acquired a reputation for disloyalty. Later that year, the British Parliament passed the Prohibitory Act to prohibit trade with the American rebelling colonies, and sent HMS Scorpion to keep watch over the island. The island's forts were stripped of cannon, such that by the end of 1775, all of Bermuda's forts were without cannon, shot and powder. Yet, wartime trade of contraband continued along well-established family connections. With 120 vessels by 1775, Bermuda continued to trade with St. Eustatius until 1781, and provided salt to North American ports, despite the presence of hundreds of privateers.In June 1776, HMS Nautilus secured the island, followed by HMS Galatea in September. Yet, the two British captains seemed more intent on capturing prize money, causing a severe food shortage on the island until the departure of Nautilus in October. After France's entry into the war in 1778, Sir Henry Clinton refortified and garrisoned the island under the command of Major William Sutherland. As a result, 91 French and American ships were captured in the winter of 1778–1779, bringing the population once again to the brink of starvation. Bermudian trade was severely hampered by the combined efforts of the Royal Navy, the British garrison and loyalist privateers, such that famine struck the island in 1779.The death of George Bruere in 1780 turned the governorship over to his son, George Jr., an active loyalist. Under his leadership, smuggling was stopped, and the Bermudian colonial government populated with like-minded loyalists. Even Henry Tucker abandoned trading with the United States, because of the presence of many privateers. Loyalist privateers based in Bermuda captured 114 prizes between 1777 and 1781, while 130 were captured in 1782.The Bermuda Gazette, Bermuda's first newspaper, began publishing in 1784. After the American Revolution, the Royal Navy began improving the harbours on the Bermudas. In 1811, work began on the large Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island, in the west of the chain, which was to serve as the islands' principal naval base guarding the western Atlantic Ocean shipping lanes. To guard the dockyard, the British Army built a large Bermuda Garrison, and heavily fortified the archipelago. During the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States, the British attacks on Washington, D.C. and the Chesapeake were planned and launched from Bermuda, where the headquarters of the Royal Navy's North American Station had recently been moved from Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1816, James Arnold, the son of Benedict Arnold, fortified Bermuda's Royal Naval Dockyard against possible US attacks. Today, the National Museum of Bermuda, which incorporates Bermuda's Maritime Museum, occupies the Keep of the Royal Naval Dockyard, including the Commissioner's House, and exhibits artefacts of the base's military history. The British abolished the slave trade in 1807, but not the institution itself. As a result of frequent slave rebellions in their other colonies, as well as the efforts of British abolitionists, the British Parliament abolished slavery in 1833.Due to its proximity to the southeastern US coast, Bermuda was frequently used during the American Civil War as a stopping point base for the Confederate States' blockade runners on their runs to and from the Southern states, and England, to evade Union naval vessels on blockade patrol; the blockade runners were then able to transport essential war goods from England and deliver valuable cotton back to England. The old Globe Hotel in St George's, which was a centre of intrigue for Confederate agents, is preserved as a public museum. Anglo-Boer War During the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), 5,000 Boer prisoners of war were housed on five islands of Bermuda. They were located according to their views of the war. "Bitterenders" (Afrikaans: Bittereinders), who refused to pledge allegiance to the British Crown, were interned on Darrell's Island and closely guarded. Other islands such as Morgan's Island held 884 men, including 27 officers; Tucker's Island held 809 Boer prisoners, Burt's Island 607, and Port's Island held 35.The New York Times reported an attempted mutiny by Boer prisoners of war en route to Bermuda and that martial law was enacted on Darrell's Island, in addition to the escape of three Boer prisoners to mainland Bermuda, a young Boer soldier stowed away and sailed from Bermuda to New York on the steamship Trinidad.The most famous escapee was the Boer prisoner of war Captain Fritz Joubert Duquesne, who was serving a life sentence for "conspiracy against the British government and on (the charge of) espionage". On the night of 25 June 1902, Duquesne slipped out of his tent, worked his way over a barbed-wire fence, swam 1.5 miles (2.4 km) past patrol boats and bright spotlights, through storm-wracked waters, using the distant Gibbs Hill Lighthouse for navigation until he arrived ashore on the main island. From there he escaped to the port of St. George's and a week later, he stowed away on a boat heading to Baltimore, Maryland. He settled in the US and later became a spy for Germany in both World Wars. He claimed to be responsible for the 1916 death of Lord Kitchener in the sinking of HMS Hampshire, the head of the British Army who had also commanded British forces in South Africa during the second Boer War, but this had resulted from a mine. In 1942, Col. Duquesne was arrested by the FBI for leading the Duquesne Spy Ring, which still to this day is the largest espionage case in the history of the United States.Lord Kitchener's brother, Lt. Gen. Sir Walter Kitchener, had been the governor of Bermuda from 1908 until his death in 1912. His son, Major Hal Kitchener, bought Hinson's Island (with his partner, Major Hemming, another First World War aviator). The island had formerly been part of the Boer POW camp, housing teenaged prisoners from 1901 to 1902. In the early 20th century, as modern transport and communication systems developed, Bermuda became a popular destination for American, Canadian and British tourists arriving by sea. The United States Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which enacted protectionist trade tariffs on goods imported into the US, led to the demise of Bermuda's once-thriving agricultural export trade to America and encouraged the development of tourism as an alternative source of income. The island was one of the centres for illegal alcohol smuggling during the era of Prohibition in the United States (1920–1933).In 1930, after several failed attempts, a Stinson Detroiter seaplane flew to Bermuda from New York City, the first aeroplane ever to reach the islands. The flight was not without incident, as the aircraft had to land twice in the ocean, once because of darkness and again when it needed to refuel. Navigation and weather forecasting improved in 1933 when the Royal Air Force (then responsible for providing equipment and personnel for the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm) established a station at the Royal Naval Dockyard to repair float planes (and supply replacements) for the fleet. In 1936, Luft Hansa began to experiment with seaplane flights from Berlin via the Azores with continuation flights to New York City.In 1937, Imperial Airways and Pan American Airways began operating scheduled flying boat airline services from New York and Baltimore to Darrell's Island, Bermuda. In World War 2 the Hamilton Princess Hotel to become a censorship centre. All mail, radio and telegraphic traffic bound for Europe, the U.S. and the Far East were intercepted and analyzed by 1,200 censors, of British Imperial Censorship, part of British Security Coordination (BSC), before being routed to their destination. With BSC working closely with the FBI, the censors were responsible for the discovery and arrest of a number of Axis spies operating in the US, including the Joe K ring. In 1948, a regularly scheduled commercial airline service began to operate, using land-based aeroplanes landing at Kindley Field (now L.F. Wade International Airport), helping tourism to reach its peak in the 1960s–1970s. By the end of the 1970s, however, international business had supplanted tourism as the dominant sector of Bermuda's economy. The Royal Naval Dockyard, and the attendant military garrison, continued to be important to Bermuda's economy until the mid-20th century. In addition to considerable building work, the armed forces needed to source food and other materials from local vendors. Beginning in World War II, US military installations were also located in Bermuda, including a naval air station and submarine base along with US Army air, anti-aircraft, and coast artillery forces. The Army forces were under the Bermuda Base Command during the war, with some shifting and renaming of bases between the US Army, Navy, and Air Force postwar. The American military presence lasted until 1995.Universal adult suffrage and the development of a two-party political system took place in the 1960s. Universal suffrage was adopted as part of Bermuda's Constitution in 1967; voting had previously been dependent on a certain level of property ownership. On 10 March 1973, the governor of Bermuda, Richard Sharples, was assassinated by local Black Power militants during a period of civil unrest. Some moves were made towards possible independence for the islands, however this was decisively rejected in a referendum in 1995. Bermuda is a group of low-forming volcanoes in the Atlantic Ocean, near the western edge of the Sargasso Sea, roughly 578 nautical miles (1,070 km; 665 mi) east-southeast of Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, United States which is the nearest landmass.Although usually referred to in the singular, the territory consists of 181 islands, with a total area of 53.3 square kilometres (20.6 square miles). The largest island is Main Island, sometimes called Bermuda. Eight of the larger, populated islands are connected by bridges. The territory is largely low-lying, with the tallest peak being Town Hill on Main Island at 79 metres (260'). The territory's coastline is 103 km (64 mi).Despite the small land mass, some place names are repeated, including: two islands named Long Island (one in the Great Sound, the other formerly in Castle Harbour but co-joined with St. David's Island by the construction of Kindley Field during the Second World War); three bays named Long Bay (on Somerset, Main, and Cooper's islands), two Horseshoe Bays (one on the South Shore of Southampton, on the Main Island, the other at Morgan's Point, formerly Tucker's Island), three Church Bay's beside Parish churches (one on Somerset Island, beside St. James' Church, one in Southampton Parish, beside St. Anne's Church, and one in Hamilton Parish, beside Trinity Church), two Red Holes (one in Paget Parish, on the southern side of Hamilton Harbour, the other on Somerset Island, on the western shoreline of the Great Sound), three White's Islands (White's Island, also known as Kerosene Island, and the neighbouring Little White's Island, both in St. George's Harbour, and White's Island, sometimes referred to as The Isle of Wight, in Hamilton Harbour), two roads through cuttings called Khyber Pass (one in Warwick, the other in St. George's Parish), two localities named Burnt House (one in Warwick, which also gives its name to the adjacent Burnt House Hill, and the other in Pembroke, on the western side of Tom Wood's Bay), and St George's Town is on St. George's Island in St George's Parish, each known as St George's. St. George's Harbour lies between St. George's Island and St. David's Island. There is a Hamilton Parish in addition to the City of Hamilton (which is in Pembroke Parish). Many other places have alternate names, such as Ackermann's Hill in Southampton Parish, also known as Turtle Hill, Hunt's Island in Southampton, also known as Spectacle Island, Hinson's Island at the west of Hamilton Harbour, also known as Godet's Island, Riddle's Bay in Warwick Parish, also known as Heron Bay (occasionally rendered Hearne's Bay), and John Smith's Bay in Smith's Parish, also known as Newton's Bay (or Newton Bay). Bermuda gives its name to the Bermuda Triangle, a region of sea in which, according to legend, a number of aircraft and surface vessels have disappeared under supposedly unexplained or mysterious circumstances. However the concept is criticised by several academics as being spurious and exaggerated. Bermuda's pink sand beaches and clear, cerulean blue ocean waters are popular with tourists. Many of Bermuda's hotels are located along the south shore of the island. In addition to its beaches, there are a number of sightseeing attractions. Historic St George's is a designated World Heritage Site. Scuba divers can explore numerous wrecks and coral reefs in relatively shallow water (typically 30–40 ft or 9–12 m in depth), with virtually unlimited visibility. Many nearby reefs are readily accessible from shore by snorkellers, especially at Church Bay. Bermuda's most popular visitor attraction is the Royal Naval Dockyard, which includes the National Museum of Bermuda. Other attractions include the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo, Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, the Botanical Gardens and Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art, lighthouses, and the Crystal Caves with stalactites and underground saltwater pools. It is not possible to rent a car on the island; public transport and taxis are available or visitors can hire scooters for use as private transport. Bermuda consists of more than 150 limestone islands, but especially 5 main islands, along the southern margin of the Bermuda Platform, which is one of three topographic highs found on the Bermuda Pedestal. This Bermuda Pedestal sits atop the Bermuda Rise