In a world beset by problems, maybe it is not such a bad thing that politicians sometimes provide policies with more entertainment value than solemn importance.

Such is the case with the debate over where manned air flight first soared, which is really not much of a debate at all, thus the entertainment aspect.

The speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives has introduced a resolution criticizing Connecticut's General Assembly for passing a law that replaced the Wright Brothers as the inventors of the first successful airplane. According to the Connecticut legislature, a German immigrant from Bridgeport named Gustave Whitehead deserves that honor.

As noted here at the time, as the 2013 session was about to adjourn, lawmakers took up and quickly passed one of those bills designed to please this or that group of constituents and otherwise do no harm, except, in this case, to history.

The primary aim of that so-called omnibus bill was voters of various ethnic backgrounds and musical tastes. It proclaimed March as Irish-American Month, October as Italian-American Month, November as Native American Month and June 24 as French-Canadian Day. (The bill did not explain why French Canadians only warranted a day.) It also selected the long awaited official state polka, "The Ballroom Polka," and picked a second official state song, "The Beautiful Connecticut Waltz."

Then, as the icing on the omnibus, the historians in the General Assembly literally wrote the Wrights out of their place in aviation history and replaced with them with Mr. Whitehead. They did this by altering an existing law that calls on the governor to designate a day each year as Powered Flight Day, "to honor the first powered flight by the Wright Brothers and to commemorate the Connecticut aviation and aerospace industry." The alteration crossed out "the Wright Brothers" and wrote in Mr. Whitehead's name.

The lawmakers thereby honored a long disputed claim that Mr. Whitehead flew his airplane over Fairfield in 1901. That would be two years before the Wright Brothers' well documented and historically recognized flight over Kitty Hawk, N.C., in a plane they designed and built in Dayton, Ohio, the two states that are recognized worldwide for being "First in Flight."

The Whitehead claim is based on a story that appeared in one of Bridgeport's five daily newspapers, but none of the others, on Aug. 14, 1901, and a grainy photograph that could be of just about anything. The Ohio resolution notes the photograph "reveals only indistinct shapes."

The story described a flight by the Whitehead airship as lasting 10 minutes and covering half a mile. When this information appeared after passage of the omnibus bill, Sergei Sikorsky, the 87-year-old son of Connecticut aircraft pioneer Igor Sikorsky, told The Hartford Courant the aircraft was probably a balloon and balloons have been around for centuries. "This works out to an airspeed of 3 mph; impossibly slow for an airplane, but realistic for a dirigible or balloon," said Mr. Sikorsky.

The Whitehead claim has repeatedly surfaced and been repeatedly dismissed. However, in March of 2013, the British publication, "Jane's All the World's Aviation," published an article quoting the Bridgeport Herald, giving the Whitehead adherents in the legislature the boost they needed to honor him as the father of flight.

It's noteworthy that the Wrights themselves never claimed to be the first to get a powered airplane off the ground and said others had flown as early as 1890. They did claim to have developed the first practical airplane and that's undeniable.

It would be nice to see the Connecticut General Assembly take the high air space and restore Orville and Wilbur to their rightful place as the honorees on Connecticut's Powered Flight Day. If that is too much to expect, we strongly urge that no lawmaker try to put "First in Flight" on Connecticut's license plates, as advocated by Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch and others. It's already been done in Ohio and North Carolina.

"Alone in History" might be more appropriate for Connecticut.