Ohio House panel OKs measure rejecting claim Connecticut aviator beat Wrights as 1st in flight
An Ohio House panel has approved a resolution rejecting Connecticut's insistence that one of its aviators beat the Wright brothers to the first successful airplane flight by two years.
The Ohio House Transportation Committee OK'd the measure by an 11-0 vote Tuesday. The measure's next stop is the full House.
The measure repudiates Connecticut's contention Gustave Whitehead successfully flew a powered, heavier-than-air machine of his own design on Aug. 14, 1901, "or on any other date."
A 2013 Connecticut law declared Whitehead's 1901 flight as beating the Wright Brothers' December 1903 flight off Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Aviation historians generally agree the Wrights won the race to flight.
Connecticut state Sen. Kevin Kelly says his state "must stand strongly behind the history (it knows) to be true."