COLUMBUS, Ohio — A resolution moving through the Ohio State House challenges Connecticut’s insistence that one of its aviators beat the Wright brothers to the first successful airplane flight by two years.
The Ohio measure got its first hearing Tuesday. If passed, it would repudiate Connecticut’s claim that Gustave Whitehead ‘‘successfully flew a powered, heavier-than-air machine of his own design on August 14, 1901, or on any other date.’’
Connecticut passed a law in 2013 requiring the governor to proclaim a date for ‘‘Powered Flight Day’’ to honor Whitehead’s 1901 flight as the first, predating the Wright brothers’ famous flight off Kitty Hawk, N.C., in December 1903.
Now, the home state of Orville and Wilbur Wright is pushing back, reasserting the version of history agreed upon by most historians and aviation experts: The Wrights deserve the distinction of being the first to fly.