Many noticed an irregularity in the maps of Google Ocean. What looked to be a massive sunken land mass with a city-like grid.

Of course, the words massive sunken land mass with a city-like grid cannot be uttered around anyone with half a personality before someone wonders aloud… “Wait, is this the lost city of Atlantis?”

Now, it appears Google has taken steps to cover up this discovery. No doubt counting their newly dried doubloons from their waterlogged paymasters, the folks at Mountain View decided to “update” their maps with new “data” which “corrected” the “anomaly”.

A likely story.

In fact, the grid was merely caused by overlapping datasets, according to NOAA. Besides that, the grid that looked like a little town actually covered an area of ocean more than 100 miles (161 kilometers) wide — not exactly small-town proportions.

The updated Google Ocean has been scrubbed of this Atlantis artifact. Google Ocean is also becoming increasingly accurate in other ways.

Google has yet to confirm or deny reports that crucial early funding was delivered by Atlantean plutocrats or the Eric Schmidt is not, in fact, a fish.

[MSNBC]

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. Monday we learned just why The Triangle might be the strangest result of number fudging in history and on Wednesday we explored the Triangle’s connection to aliens.

It only seems appropriate that our hatch-battened voyage through the Bermuda Triangle should take us from the star-gazing visions of Steven Spielberg to the subaqueous dreams of James Cameron. Sure, “The Abyss” has nothing to do with Atlantis, but given the number of Triangle enthusiasts whose necks are cramped in all the opposite places of the upward-looking UFO seekers, the film seems like a good place to start. USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects), like the one that Ed Harris’ character hangs out in while assuring the aliens that humans do, in fact, remember how to love, make frequent appearances in Atlantean-themed conspiracy manifestos.

While you can find various reports from around the world of actual submarine crafts sighted tearing through the waves of this or that ocean (Japan’s Dragon’s Triangle, another of the certified-vile vortices, boasts a panty vending machine’s worth) most USO sightings seem to involve mysterious lights shining up from deep below the surface of the water. Over the years, tons of sea-faring busybodies have reported seeing these bizarre illuminations, both in motion and stationary, within the increasingly non-specific bounds of the Bermuda Triangle. Many sightings have come with the speculation that, below the Triangle’s waters, lay the ruined spires and crumbling streets of Atlantis, a long dead city where, prior to its cataclysmic destruction, a bunch of forgetful mermen left the lights on.

Of course, I’m joking –Atlantis obviously didn’t use the wasteful electric lights on which we primitive humans so desperately rely. They used giant crystals. Or so said Edgar Cayce, the late 19th/early 20th century American psychic who used his cosmic extra-sensory brain power to chug down a trough load of Atlantean revelation, which he then spat back out during a number of his “readings.” These “readings,” which began in 1901 and continued on for 40 years, always started with Cayce entering a dozy trance state, and ended in mystical predictions about everything from politics and business to ancient history and fallen empires, of which Atlantis seemed to be Cayce’s favorite.

A background on Atlantis and the one piece of hard proof that might have proved the whole theory correct… (more…)