How the hell did I ever learn about Jonas Salk, or the Wright Brothers

[ehrnst]

or Hitler or algebra without 100 year old statues to teach me????

[HopeAgain]

1. There's been 100 years of propaganda

Glorifying this horrible war in which more Americans died than any other. People don't like to believe they had ancestors who literally died achieving nothing for a side that represented an evil institution that most the rest of the world's civilizations had already abrogated as immoral.

Defending these statutes is emotional, not rational. The rationalizations follow the emotional position taking.

[TheBlackAdder]

2. The Wright Brothers did not fly the first controlled flight.

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http://www.flyingmag.com/pilots-places/pilots-adventures-more/wright-brothers-not-first-fly

In a startling announcement a few days ago, Jane's All the World's Aircraft has named an August 1901 flight by Connecticut aviation pioneer Gustave Whitehead as the first successful powered flight in history, beating the Wright brothers' first flight by more than two years. Jane's, which calls itself the world's foremost authority on aviation history, with great authority, has traditionally backed the Wright Brothers as first in flight. Now they say the evidence for Whitehead's flight is strong enough for the publication to reverse course and recognize it as the first successful powered flight.
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The evidence that Jane's presents is compelling. There are multiple photographs, overwhelming evidence of Whitehead's preparation for the first flight — Condor was the 21st airplane he built — eyewitnesses, dozens of newspaper accounts of the story and ample evidence not only of an engine sufficient for the flight but one whose basic design was used on many subsequent successful airplanes by other designers, including Glenn Curtiss. Moreover, Whitehead made another successful powered flight in an airplane with three-axis controls in 1902, more than a year before the Wright brothers' first flight.

The decision by Jane's is sure to fuel the most controversial discussion in aviation, perhaps ever, as aviation enthusiasts take sides, either with the Wright Brothers, who made history on the North Carolina dunes in December 1903, or Whitehead, who, the evidence now seems to indicate, did the same two-and-a-half years earlier on the quiet streets of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

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