Wrighting history over again

                  The Wright Brothers weren't what?
                  Good ol' Orville and Wilbur weren't the first men to fly?  This is what the Connecticut Legislature is trying to sell me ------ that a German-born aviator and Bridgeport, Conn., resident named Gustav Whitehead beat them by more than two years when he took to the sky in his airplane over Bridgeport in 1901.  What in the name of the Mile High Club is going on here?
                  If this is true, you mean I spent all that money to visit the Wright Brothers museum near Kitty Hawk, N.C., where the historic flight took place, to honor two guys who won the silver, not the gold, when I could have been drinking in a Corona on the beach instead of false history?
                 You mean as I pulled muscles I didn't realize I had while trudging those sun-baked Carolina hills to reach the historic takeoff spot that I did so to honor the runners-up?
                 And what of that bakery near my hometown that honored the hero aviators by naming types of bread Orville and Wilbur rye?
                 The Wright Brothers weren't the first to fly?  Next thing you're going to tell me is that Buzz actually sneaked down the ladder of the Eagle before Neil as the latter was taking a final sip of Tang.
                 Based on a 1901 Connecticut newspaper account and an enlarged, blurry photo discovered by Australian aviation historian John Brown in a museum attic in Germany in March, Connecticut state lawmakers passed a bill last week honoring Whitehead as the first man to achieve flight.
                The enlarged photo is hardly a DNA strand connecting Whitehead and the friendly skies; it looks more like a faded goldfish cracker in a bowl of diluted mustard than irrefutable evidence crowning him king of the clouds.
                If the photo isn't definitive proof that Whitehead bested the Wrights, Brown believes the accounts of 17 witnesses interviewed in the 1930s who claim they saw Whitehead flying are proof.
               So, exactly why is Connecticut attempting to move the Wright Brothers from first class to coach in the annals of history?
               Money.
               Imagine that.
               Connecticut state Rep. Charles Clemons Jr., one of the bill's sponsors, acknowledged that anointing Whitehead as the first man to fly into the blue would fill the town coffers with green.  Such a coup would put Bridgeport on the map for something other than being the birthplace of actor John Ratzenberger, aka the know-it-all mailman Cliff Clavin of "Cheers," and where former Sixers center Manute Bol attended college.
              "It would enable us to have a museum and with that, generate some tourist attractions," Clemons said, acknowledging how the sluggish economy has affected the blue-collar city.
              Tom Crouch, senior curator for aeronautics at the Smithsonian Institution, which displays Wilbur and Orville Wright's plane at the National Air and Space Museum, said Whitehead's backers are "absolutely wrong."
             "Whitehead's legend has spawned much speculation and hearsay," he said.  "People who have looked at this over the years..... and almost unanimously reject the claim."
             The Wrights or Whitehead?
             The debate will rage.  But for my money, Orville and Wilbur retain the gold medal until better evidence is produced than a cartoonish photo portending to be indisputable proof.
             I'd hate to learn that, as others were digging their toes in the Outer Banks surf, I was at the museum admiring Avis, not Hertz.