Posted on 06/07/2013 7:41:22 AM PDT by JoeProBono
The Connecticut state Senate recently passed a bill striking Orville and Wilbur Wright from history, and assigning credit for the first powered flight to Gustave Whitehead instead.
Aviation historian John Brown found photographic evidence in March that Whitehead made a powered flight over Connecticut in 1901, "two years, four months, and three days before the Wright brothers."
The relevant section of House Bill 6671 reads, "The Governor shall proclaim a date certain in each year as Powered Flight Day to honor the first powered flight by [the Wright brothers] Gustave Whitehead and to commemorate the Connecticut aviation and aerospace industry."
In 1968, Connecticut declared Whitehead the “Father of Flight,” recognizing his contributions before there was evidence of his powered flight. Governor Dannel Malloy is expected to sign the new bill next week.
Widely described as "first in flight," even on North Carolina license plates, the Wright brothers made their historic 852-foot, 59-second flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C. on Dec. 17, 1903.
Historians have long known that several individuals and groups were working on flying machines around the same time, including German immigrant Whitehead.
But some historians remain unconvinced that Whitehead ever got off the ground. Though there are surviving written accounts, the photographic evidence is compelling but not definitive.
Connecticut has a long aviation history, and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., maker of the Black Hawk helicopter, has headquarters just miles from the site of Whitehead’s flight.
Whitehead's plane had bat-like canvas wings and was called "The Condor No. 21," and Brown said he flew it over Bridgeport, Conn. at a height of 50 feet for an estimated 1.5 miles on the morning of Aug. 14, 1901.
Is there any way they can make him a gay black man so they can claim even more changes to history and their tolerance and acceptance?
I wish someone would wipe Connecticut from history too.
True dat.
So, Connecticut is calling Wilbur and Orville the Wrong Brothers.
30 HP from calcium carbide engine and 25 lb plane. Bull squeeze. Never freaking happened. Couldn’t do it today either. A freaking parasail weighs more than that.
They were Christians and their inspiration for flight came from a passage in the Bible .
Isaiah 40:31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Sure, the systematic destruction of American history is no big deal, especially since we can trust our government to tell us the “real story” that contradicts court decisions a hundred years ago.
/s
This is all part of a plan to literally rewrite American history. Hussein made it into textbooks before inaugurated. We trashed Pluto so those textbooks could be re-written, and now we flush Wilbur and Orville to re-write THOSE textbooks. All the while, we look to NASA to tell us who the real muslim scientist heroes were.
No a muslim so they can claim at least one beneficial achievement for mankind (like every keeps claiming they have done).
Would never fly.
Show the proof that he did fly before the Wright Bros. and I’ll buy it. If not, this move means nothing.
He was a hoaxer.
I think his story exemplies the professional hazards of being a “lone inventor”. No one to do PR, no one to really press his case because he was a nobody, so we see the result.
Yep. I think you are correct. My biggest problem is that history needs to be less on the fluid side. That is, barring new compelling evidence, what we know is what we “know”. There is no point in changing the history books on this one that I can see.
If you do something major, get it documented or you may not get noticed...
I think the Wrights had the first powered and CONTROLLED flight. I’ve heard of a couple of others prior to theirs powered, but not controlled.
Oh, I see. He had to flap his arms to fly.
“I just flew in from Cleveland. Gee, are my arms tired.” bada bing
New claims French pair died after landing plane in U.S.
Remains of white aircraft found off New York coast ,how about this
To tell you the truth.. I don’t really care. The fact that a rabid liberal government of Conn. chooses this time to rewrite, revise or amend history is suspicious, and frankly I could give a sh!t what a bunch of liberals say.
Maybe the Wrights were Republicans to boot.NC must have been quite conservative in those days. I enjoyed visiting Kitty Hawk. You can still see the hill the Wrights used to take off.
French pilots, Francois Coli, left, and Charles Nungesser, in the plane they attempted to fly from Paris to New York. The flight took off just 12 days before Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic solo flight made the record books. Bernard Decre, who is currently searching for the wreckage, believes the disappearance was a cover-up so not to distract from Lindbergh's achievement
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