flyers are sending them out john paul thank you for taking care of our website allison our vice president thank you for alice and for wearing many hats today and of course to color for always elsewhere on television he's hosted the premiere season of the discovery channel's ocular mechanics show hosted a special on america's like house g h g t v and also worked on the travel channel's suddenly ventures series freeze frame new england notebook one reporter six state uncommon stories was released in may rd team the book recounts many of ted's favorite people and stories from his travels all around you a good national geographic travel thank you very much nancy thank you yes i was here in november is nancy i was reminded of that it begs the question of course how can there miss me if i won't go away but thank you all so much for joining me today i said when i got here to nancy i said you know this is the kind of day when you find out who the hardy new englanders really are so we're looking at a thank you not the nicest day to come out but thank you so for some of those get off the stage here so i'm going to talk to you that yes getting my books mixed up but you know the funny thing in researching feuds which everybody relates to on some level the st thing that comes across the becomes apparent is that you know people find feuds invariably fascinating you know it doesn't matter what the spat is political social doesn't matter what it is right there is there is one exception though in terms of everybody finding feuds fascinating and that you know the st it took a critical mass to have a feud but not that i'm not capable feuding within myself but it does take generally a critical mass of more than one person have a feud so the st recorded feud in history  i'm sure yours does too in issues and so forth but isn't it isn't it nice to take a little bit of solace that history is the st recorded family in human history also had a share of this function so i have just often just taken some abel but in knowing would we are actually home to arguably america's most well in terms of sheer volume its biggest family for the the mccoys you know in  million and counting now over three and a half decades they have fields and mccoys nothing like that nothing nothing like that and that is home in new england you know i was like to point out in a wonderful literary environment like this and i love being you know in a room full of people who appreciate history one of my other favorite new england feuds involves one of world literatures greatest figures right we know who this is anybody if you look really closely on the top right you'll see it says rudyard kipling i'm going to tell you how clueless i can be when i st started giving this book and i would say who that people who are really super literate like to sit up front so then i started to appreciate the two front rows more and more and that went on this late point in that one says it right that's how dream house no lock up in the rolling hills where from the hills he could see mom and dad not to the east and no lock is a hindi word meaning gem of gems and he fully expected i think when he and his newly wed when his his new bride when they built it i fully expected by one thousand nine hundred that he expected to live out his life for kipling said later in his life there were one of only two places in the world that he could die happy one was mumbai and the other was was brought  sadly neither one of which he was ever able to return to west brattleboro he was unable to return because he had a terrible falling out there he is in the study of his newly minted writing room where i have sat in west b the way wrote the jungle book arguably as most famous book in one thousand know one in west brom a bar over money he had unfortunately a terrible falling out with his brother in law right now if you have a falling out with a family member and you live in belmont your family member lives in i don't know you know the west name it somewhere else in the country you know chances are you'll be out of each other's hair and you know it might cause you some degree of anx but it's not going to upset your daily routine it kipling's daily routine because his brother in law had given kipling and his wife the land to build their dream house and live next door right so they had a terrible falling out kipling was forced to leave ronald r o never to  return very sad very sad the good thing is though that no lock is still there including that writing room where you can sit in that chair where kipling wrote which is quite a thrill i sat there for about an hour and a quarter i thought they went to charge me for the week because you can read no laca you can rent no luck now i'm going to skip ahead to founding fuz which is how i begin the book this is wonderful because being in belmont here today we're very close to where this is of course just the road now we course know what we're talking about when we say america was founded in a feud which was what very good you'd be surprised how often i look at blank faces really i know it's been a while but yes the revolutionary war right right which begins in the early morning or late night april th early morning april one thousand nine hundred and seventy five just down the road to the east there in on lexington green where the british troops arrive in the shot heard round the world is fired and they move on to the old north bridge in concord where they meet a far larger rebel force and their day starts to go downhill very quickly but you know when we think today when we think today of america's closest ally in the world by today i mean today because it's a very fluid situation these days don't know what will be the case by wednesday but my only editorial comment but when you think traditionally let's put it that way traditionally when you think of america's closest ally in the world you think of the u k right great britain right right do you know you may know because this is belmont so when i asked this question how muncie massachusetts it's you know it's a little bit different story but you may you probably know that the two entities that are still fighting over the american revolution are concord and lexington yes they are still fighting over which town really deserves the title of birthplace of american liberty which just staggers british tourists when there is great you know medicine you go right right that is kind of the battle after the battle how many of you saw that wonderful exhibit when green yeah it was a wonderful exhibit which really laid out why that is still going on this is arguably my favorite well it's not my fair we're going to end with my favorite going on few but this is absolutely one of my top three favorite new england feuds because it goes under the radar a little bit it goes under the radar a little bit you know only months after concord and lexington we have the battle of bunker hill right in june and this was the battle of course where the british could be is said to have won the battle but begun to have lost the war a year later they were evacuating from austin and you know in a way that i'm sure that almost any of the groups around may take a  most famous battle has been called by many one of the single worst historical inaccuracy in history in fact no less than one of my favorite historians favorite authors how many of you know philbrick wonderful author and he wrote a book about the battle of bunker hill about ten years ago in which he referred to the misnaming that inaccuracy as the single most egregious historical inaccuracy in all of american history and yet he called his book thus perpetuating the single most of the story you know you know it's funny jeopardy has been in the news i'm alex to back unfortunately right but you know that's one of only two times i can't recall the other time it's own it's one of only two times in jeopardy entire history where they asked for the name of this battle and they had two answers that would have been okayed by the judges either bunker or breed till the person nonetheless said bunker hill but they missed another teaching up moment not then your philbrick and nonetheless even though it is not true even though it is completely inaccurate nonetheless thirteen generations and counting now of bunkers get the monument they get the guided missile frigate named after them they get the community college named after them they get cities and towns across america named after them they get a drag strip in indiana named after them at this point i was going crazy they get a chili sauce named after them in the me you get the idea you had the idea and you know it that you know what the carefully look what it says read still site of the battle of bunker hill they can't win the poor breeds cannot win you know i've become friends over the years with jed breed an entrepreneur in cambridge who is th direct descendant of al g breed for whom the actual hill where the actual battle was actually fought and you know jett has told me over the years that when he is out and about and hears people talking about the battle of bunker hill he sort of feels off to his fo politely go over any time he hears that mention and correct them i've told him he's lucky to still but but i only include one sports rivalry in the book but it's the only one the only rivalry in new england really that doesn't need any explanation it has it's own nomenclature i mean when you say the rivalry everybody knows everybody knows you're talking about the rivalry that begins with the most famous red sox of all time  who becomes the most famous yankee of all time and on it goes on it goes through the forty's and williams and demise you know and through the seventy's with fisk and munson and it leads of course to the creation of the months nixon line hartford connecticut which is perfect because where i said we're going to end with my fame my favorite new england feud perfect that this runs through hard for because that's where we are right now it is a feud that involves one of my favorite subjects st flight orville wright at the controls his older brother wilbur running alongside and we have st flight you're looking the what has been called the single most reproduced photograph in human history and it made the wright brothers justly world famous there they are six years later on the porch of their home looks proud to be wearing a pair of pretty snazzy cool socks and wilbur looks like he's ready to have the photographer leave but nonetheless they would just lee had become the toast of the entire world for creating the airplane and fulfilling the long elusive dream of st flight and it made them as i said justly famous for flight but what if i told you gentleman may may actually deserve credit for st flight anybody have you have good stuff know good stuff vice cop changed his name to was americanised the white head when he emigrated to america just before one thousand nine hundred he was born in bavaria load of shells in germany he was known even as a boy as the bird obsessed with flight now being obsessed with flight in the latter years of the th century does not mean being obsessed with airplanes because of course they don't exist but it does mean being obsessed with ever more complicated gliders weather balloons  weather observatory designing weather balloons but once you know one he had moved to bridgeport connecticut where he was at work on his st flying machine number twenty had cracked up when it flew into the rd story of a building in a park in pittsburgh pennsylvania rd story that's thirty five feet off the ground so by ninety one he's at work on number twenty one and that summer things began to really heat up in terms and he is the only trained engineer in that group these are the four guys who really were working nonstop and when i say working on stop this is not a full time jobs all these guys were working guys but working men in bridgeport but at this point they're so committed to this project that the basically all working i ten are in jobs temporary jobs to get whatever kind of money they can put together basically to afford the next component or piece of material they need to to tweak out number twenty one  and but he is the only whitehead's the only trained engineer now you might be wondering why it is that you've never seen this photograph and if we said this is the most reproduced photograph in human history and it has to do with the moment of  st flight and that this may have achieved st flight two years earlier then how come we've never seen this well bunch of reasons for that which was something that as i was researching that i was consumed with why is it why isn't that we don't know more about him because as a journalist i mean i was for months i was skeptical skeptical to the point of of believing those on the other side who have long said this did not happen so it took me a while to kind of inch toward the other side so a few reasons why we don't know or may not know more about it one of them has to do with simply the way history is recorded right so history almost without exception devotes its the bulk of its attention especially over time by to the winner's preciously when we're talking about inventions achievements milestones we don't record in depth the person who almost made it right anybody know who i should raise yes he was yes he was and guess when ally should gray applied for a patent for a telephone he was beaten by twenty four hours by alexander  it might just as well have been the grace of system but it wasn't nobody knows a lie should great today but it came within twenty four hours of getting the patent for the st telephone so history records the winners ok it also has to do with how over time we we know about history because think of it like concentric circles that are created when you drop a pebble in a minute and in a puddle you have concentric circles and as the circles get further out they become more diffused and weaker and weaker you know when an event is happens in our lifetime especially now and i mean contemporaneously now for us living now we have such a immen array of ways to appreciate what is happening now in terms that just in what's news will more than ever before in human history nonetheless when you go ten years out fifty years out one hundred years out at that point it only it falls only to those like historians researchers those who are able and ready and willing to take the time and have the patience to do the digging to ferret out details of a story that happened a one hundred years earlier just the way it is same with st life so in this case there's already too knocks against our knowing more about this not only did he allegedly apparently presumably come in nd but it happened over one hundred years ago but it happened over a one hundred because he hadn't lost yet right and that's the other thing about st flight that we no longer appreciate you know those of a certain generation including myself look kid but nonetheless you know the space race for the late fifty's the sixty's it was it we call it a space race for a reason it was a race that america initially didn't win when i was so it was a race what we no longer appreciate about st flight it was also a race it was also a race people were fascinated consumed with who was going to win the race for st flight we no longer think about that you know i think i think i speak for all of us you know up you think about learning about wilbur and orville wright the wright brothers you just think that like you know what they invented the point these these these brothers from dayton ohio a bicycle builders went back and forth the kitty hawk north carolina over the space of one thousand and fifteen years and then not alone so from a historical standpoint that's critical they were not alone there were easily half a dozen half a dozen early aviation pioneers from europe south america central america america france who were all racing to be st in flight but we don't want to think about that we're just like the wright brothers did it by themselves everybody was building on what everybody else was doing everybody and the wright brothers knew about whitehead and whitehead knew about the rights here's an in depth here's an in depth magazine piece about whitehead here is in one thousand no one on the cover of american inventor the popular mechanics of its day huge distribution for its day so the point i'm making is that good stuff whitehead unknown now not unknown in his time he was know people did know him as an aviation pioneer so august one thousand and one we're getting this is the day in question this is the day that whitehead might have  flown you know the four components to st flight a flight had to be manned i say manned it had to be piloted right at this point all the early aviation pioneers were men but within twenty years they will be some extraordinary women aviators including a wonderful young woman earhart but at this point they're all men it had to be manned it had to be sustained but it had to be controlled and most importantly it had to be powered it had to be powered this was going to be the breakthrough for st flight and people to try to everything the power people had tried water steam sam langley who became the st president of the smithsonian society tried steam power you know how much water it would take to lift the seven hundred and seven off the ground where and both of his flights right into the potomac right so people were trying everything whitehead had an advantage over the wright brothers in a couple of ways but when the most important was a member said he was an engineer he was an engine builder that was his field of expertise that was the one single element that was necessary for st flight that had not been yet achieved people to achieve all the other three elements with gliders being piloted man being controlled being sustained all had been achieved gliders it was the engine it was the power part that had alluded that had alluded humankind for millennia that now we were at that inflection point where it seemed like the moment was right for the technology and the knowledge to come together and it was coming together people knew it was going to happen just like we knew space was going to happen so as an engine builder he built his own engine wright brothers had to outsource they were bicycle builders which check something away from them they were geniuses on lightweight metal frame construction after all that's what they used to build bikes so the wright flyer was a genius of lightweight metal frame skeletal construction b whitehead was an engine builder built his own engine and in building his own engine he decided to use a fuel source nobody had tried yet the chemical a set which was perfect genius acetylene is a chemical that burns almost like medium it burns with a very short burst of heat and light and energy perfect for a very short flight which is what they were trying to achieve so in late august whitehead and his crew are ready to try number twenty one to fly number twenty one they spent about two and a half weeks moving out a dirt road just over the line from bridgeport in fairfield connecticut to act as a crude runway because by the way of those you can see it there are two wheels under number twenty one you know again another distinction the wright brothers used gravity to get into the air right they were in a steel tracked down kill devil hills to get into the air later on back in ohio they actually used a catapult to get into the air what it doesn't they're ready to fly they have got number twenty one on an ox cart they're pulling it over it's about it's dark it's predawn very very crucial to keep in mind taxis they remove a couple of boulders that are acting as kind of crude trucks in front of the wheels you know he taxis for about eighty five feet and he's airborne he banks a hard northwest turn on long island sound to turn back to a bridgeport what was brilliant about what they were doing you know it was dark now they didn't have any lights on the plane however what they did was the whole idea was to turn into the rising sun in the east and to use the rising sun to light their pa back into bridgeport we're going to talk in a minute about why it was dark and why would you do that but this is an artist's rendering of what number twenty one might have looked like as it approached the coast of connecticut in bridgeport he flew for just under thirty minutes just over half a mile at a height of about fifty feet of the height of a five story building at that time and he landed back in bridgeport so the question is how would that match up with what the reds did well so the right flew for about fifteen seconds but one hundred and twenty feet at the height of sixty feet so basically the height of a present day n b a center might just off the ground right like this the ceiling here basically white had flu as i said about half a mile wide and about fifty feet so if you're wondering why we don't know more about why it had i think the most compelling picture is actually and it has less to do with the plane that's in the background in the his engine that's in the foreground and more of what's in his hands he's holding his st daughter rose st child gustav whitehead was a poor german immigrant he was a poor german immigrant at a time of rising sometimes very loosely anti german sentiment within ten years of this picture being taken the world would be at war with germany including the united states a short time later not a good time to be running around with a german but he also spoke almost no english but most importantly he was deathly afraid of running afoul  not only with the german into german sentiment but for the fact that he was what we would call today undocumented now and there was no wall to keep him out so he was deathly afraid that somehow he would run afoul of the authorities you know in a way that he didn't completely understand and they would deport him and separate him from his family right so he decided although it was a burning lifelong passion to try to create st flight he still felt he needed to somehow hedges bad cut down on the odds of attracting too much attention so he would fly in the dark he would fly at a time of day when he expected the fewest number of people to see what he was doing and certainly not to be able to take a photograph or anything of that sort which is why they flew at five am just as it was becoming light which turned out to be i think in the end as we'll see when we wrap up a plan that worked alas all too perfect he never flew again never flew again he had a growing family he needed to support he turned to building engine components this one for curtis aviation he did design shortly before he died a prototype for a helicopter and he died a young man he died still in his forty's in bridgeport connecticut nine hundred and twenty seven and i always say you know in some ways this is this is where whitehead's life ends that's it that's it the talk could end here if i was just talking about whited because at this point it would be left as story ends to pick through conjecture for the rest of the last one hundred years but that's not what we have the whited story has an epilogue which is where we're at now that is actually more fascinating in some ways than his life because it's long after he's flown that actually there becomes more compelling evidence that he might just a flown st because over the next one hundred years the comes along five people they're going to quickly talk about as we as we move ahead who each in their own way has a field of expertise that are no most eerie cadence over these decades becomes fascinated on their own with the whited story and because of each his own field of expertise is able to advance the whitehead story to the point where well to today today because of what these five people have found out and researched and brought to light we now have one stating counting one american state no longer recognizes the wright brothers as st inflight the st of these extraordinary people is stella randolph she really is a woman light years ahead of her time in the thirty's she was a lawyer  was a journalist she was a teacher she became interested in the white head story she'd heard stories about him from her dad growing up in connecticut in the one thousand nine hundred and forty s she realized that there was an element of the white had story that had never been told she also realized that time was running out to tell it and that if it wasn't told now the moment would be lost forever because although white it did everything he could do as we've said right to keep people from seeing what he was doing there were none the less try as he did bridgeport she spent about six and a half months and with the help of whitehead's daughter rose she legally deposed over twenty eyewitnesses and they became the source of the st two books written about gustav whitehead both by stella randolph and now for the st time in th saga people outside of connecticut are beginning to know about before it'd only been word of mouth in connecticut and now almost daily connecticut begins fielding requests from journalists authors notebooks all kinds of stuff what they didn't have and what had yet not been done and connecticut realized that this point it needed to be done now before it was too late they needed to have an expert aviation forensics you know i mean we have forensics investigations unfortunately you know when planes crash but they also have invest that you can investigate the likelihood of whether something flew and how it flew and so connecticut approaches the one institution or america that is uniquely suited uniquely suited to carry out an expert aviation forensics investigation the smithsonian institution they have the nucle core group of aviation experts that within the next twenty five years will form the nucleus of what becomes the air and space museum so these are passionate expert aviation people and so connecticut reaches out to them and asks them to conduct a aviation forensics investigation and the smithsonian says you know anybody surprised well connecticut was plenty surprised and you know it is not every day you people of history it is not every day that you are brought a claim to a possible rival st flight that's a big deal and yet they said no they said no few months later you're looking at the day in which the wright flyer was presented to the public as the smithsonian's most proudest new acquisition the wright flyer it had been bequeath at the end of world war two it had been bequeathed to the smithsonian by the right family the heirs to wilbur and orville wright this is the day in which it was presented to the public but at the same time or actually a few years later the answer i should say the answer is still no so that was forty eight this is nine hundred and forty eight so every single year like clockwork connecticut requests the smithsonian and in fact it becomes a rite of passage for every incoming republican the republican and democratic governor in connecticut to request the smithsonian to investigate what had flight and the answer is always no  now you're looking at our friend stella randolph and where there is a man named below dwyer so this is now about ten years later and they are investigating the whitehead story to collaborate on a book and here they are at the white head museum in germany below dwyer is a decorated air force pilot he becomes fascinated with the whitehead story from the standpoint of whether or not number twenty one was airworthy so he's only concern as a pilot who fly stuff whether or not this thing actually could have flown because his point is look let's not get into any of the other stuff let's just concern ourselves with st of all determining if twenty one was airworthy because if we think  y could have flown this is worth a fight worth having if we can wait a minute there's no way this thing flew then we're just making fools of ourselves so they are here investigating about twenty years later so they decide they're going to write a book about now what they know but a funny thing happens by the one thousand nine hundred so you're looking at lowell weicker legendary connecticut guy he was a governor or attorney general senator he sat on the watergate committee which is where he's pictured here lowell weicker also grew up just like stellar randolph hearing all about the stuff what it and it irked him his entire life that the smithsonian refused to investigate the white hood story it irked him because this was an institution that was supported by taxpayer money and yet they were fusing to investigate a major claim that was being brought that had a lot of compelling evidence to it and they would not do it no matter what lowell weicker did and it burned him up a pest i'm off so by the mid seventy's it can almost like an eerie in erie companion echo to watergate right he keeps hearing sometimes and after meeting sometimes i don't cocktail chatter at parties somebody will come up to him and say you know low if you really want to know why the smithsonian investigate every sort of angle he could to see the smithsonian's private agreement with the with the right family but they claimed justifiably they said these are private papers these are the smithsonian's private papers well i think is one of the along with the voting rights act along with the civil rights act one of the single most important pieces of legislation in american history the freedom of information and overnight the smithsonian no longer has private papers and lowell weicker becomes the st american politician to use the freedom of information act he gets to look at the secret agreement and almost immediately his prosecutor's eyes go to the blah blah there was a little clause at the very end and basically what it said was in taking possession of the wright flyer this missoni an is enjoying forbidden and here by may never claim anyone but the wright brothers as st in flight or we will take the plane back it became known as the secret agreement and stella randolph and her friend below do our pivoted from the project they were working on to bring out a new book in eighty eight called history by contract in which their central premise was there is a rival claim to st flight in america americans which you've never heard of partly because your tax money finances in institution which has been uniquely suited to finding out whether or not this is true but they will not do it because they have a conflict of interest wow well this was not a great time for the smithsonian to be dealing with suddenly what becomes you know st of know i love the smithsonian i'm sure like many of you i've spent days and days and days combing through the smithsonian so we all love it but this was not a good time this was a black eye for the smithsonian it still is many would say  it was particularly a bad time because it was around about this time in the late seventy's that this missoni and was opening the air and space museum and guess what was the centerpiece of the air and space museum the wright flyer right so this was not a great time so it felt at the smithsonian you naturally you know there was a lot of this was a big story at the time and they had to have a press conference and they had to answer the charge that they were sitting on this secret agreement which basically disclosed a fundamental conflict of interest so they responded they responded st of all they said it was not a secret this was not a secret that they said here's the problem you did not ask you just asked don't you know you're going to say to someone you're missing so nobody asked furthermore they said there is no compelling evidence that anyone including white had flu before the wright brothers period even though they had never looked at a single piece of  process of writing the book he knows everything there is to know about the history of american aviation nonetheless connecticut has a problem with some of their st problem with tom crouch is that like the wright brothers tom crouch is a native of dayton ohio no i disagree i disagree of connecticut on that one you're not responsible when you're bored that mean that should not mean by definition that you cannot be objective right ok there bigger problem with john crouch i have to agree a lot more and he is also was the st official biographer of the wright brothers so really yeah so yeah they may have a justifiable problem with but that this doesn't change so we're now foremost he's a wonderful guy but he's also a a wonderful wonderful teacher still teaching full time in his late seventy's in fairfield connecticut he's also cool he's been a world class adventurer a diver skydiver  moneymore but he was a master craftsman so one thousand nine hundred and eighty n d coach went to a talk being given by a friend below dwyer the pilot in hartford connecticut and after the talk he went up to a wire and he said you know major i know your interest in the whited story is whether or not number twenty one was airworthy he said well what if we could create a perfect perfect of number twenty one and fly it in is absolutely authentic flying conditions as coached doesn't fool around he is any more marketable just the beaver when it comes to working and determination and his plan was he's a scientist right in the science so his plan when he was very methodical and he was not going to spend the tens of thousands of dollars that would be necessary if you didn't feel that he was on the right track and he didn't feel that experts thought this was worth doing so he st convened a panel of a dozen experts in aviation from all over the country this is the head of sikorsky aviation looking at it and he built a three eighth's of number twenty one and he said if this panel looks at this replica and feels that i'm on the right track and unless it is unanimous i won't do it it was unanimous and he built a full scale replica when i tell you that this is a painstakingly authentic replica down to the well down to every thread on it and by that i mean literally so so good stuff whitehead had bought the white muslin that formed the fuselage in the wings from a small village outside india and insisted on tracking down descendants of that same family who were still in business getting the white muslin from the same family there was not a not a nail a screw on that machine that was not commercially available in one thousand nine hundred and one so now he needed somebody to fly this thing he needed somebody to fly this thing because any coa so cliff robertson was going to fly it now when i spoke to on the phone i said to him i said you know st of all i think you know a lot is known about whitehead but a lot isn't and even less is known i said and i know you know this about the day that he flew we know it was hot we know it was a summer day but we don't know anything i said correct me if i'm wrong but from everything i've read and everything i've researched the one thing that is most important in a forensics investigation is the wind is the wind and we don't know there's no record of what the wind was doing that day did he have friendly headwinds to the of tailwinds did he have you know god forbid cross winds we don't know it any kind of cut me off at a certain place that listen listen listen all i can tell you all i can tell you he said when that thing taxied on the ground the only the only small place they gave themselves an edge it was fifteen feet more of dirt on the runway bridgeport they had laid down dirt on the runway to approximate the dirt road and given themselves a little fifteen foot cushion they had the same amount of acetylene in the tank and as andy is relating the story said cliff power's up he starts to roll and he realizes when he reached for the tiller that his watch fell off now there's a tiller on the stage and this i was called like a sort of a hybrid between davinci in a boat and a plane but there's a tiller the tiller is attached by a guy wire to the mast so there's a central mast right there and we talked about that one of the metrics of st flight was a flight had to be controlled so the wright flyer was controlled was controllable not in a way that a pilot today would be particularly happy with but it was controllable not in the way that number twenty one the reason for the tiller and the reason for the mast from the mast all these little segments of wings that fanned out a series of twenty nine guy wires those guy wires operated what it was the forerunner of the wing flap ailerons number twenty one dollars unlike the wright flyer was virtually controllable in every angle in so he said that cliff robertson reached for the tiller and his watch popped off it wasn't an ordinary watch it had a big altimeter on it which was crucial to know if they reached fifty feet right so he said robertson i suddenly rummaging around on the floor of the fuselage for the watch but then he thinks the only thing worse than not having a watch would be completely losing control of the craft so he brought himself into his upright position and then he said when he brought him back into his upright position he was already thirty five feet off the ground he said all that thing wanted to do was get into the air and he did he took off from what is now sikorsky airport he took off he realized by the way after thirty minutes right that he still had half a tank of acetylene which is now led aviation forensics experts to surmise that whitehead was in fact dealing with unfriendly wind conditions on that day because he used up all of his gas and and roberts and only use half a tank in the same amount of time so he flew for the entire almost an hour expended his tank of fuel he made a perfect landing back in bridgeport he was treated as a hero again you know we forget this now this was a national story and it got attention in the media like it never had before and along comes the four th and final person in the white had story john brown nobody has advanced the white had story as much as this now when he's growing up he never heard a white head he may never have heard of connecticut for all i know but he has a good excuse he grew up in australia john browne is a researcher aviation historian he works with a detective like kind of manner which will stand him in good steady as a photographic memory and in two thousand in what can only be described as an almost extraordinary ironic twist in this story john brown is hired from australia to come over to america and produce a series of t v specials here in america about the history of american aviation no who hires him the smithsonian you can see where this is gone oh yeah worst hire they ever made worst hire they ever made they let a big big fox into the hen house so john o'brien two hundred and spent the last six and a half months in sydney australia researching american aviation history and in all the history there's one little side bar that fascinates a guy named gustav he comes over here in september two thousand meets with tom crunch in washington and they talk about how they're going to produce these specials for what was then the smithsonian channel on a any and and at the conclusion of the meeting i would have loved to have seen tom crouches facial expression he said you know we didn't fly right you know that right you know i said jonah bryan works like a detective so to his detective ear he's just heard what the text of calls  about him right that was phrased in a way by design he heard the answer he thought he would get from everything he had already digested he was off to bridgeport connecticut the next morning and in less than forty eight hours john brown succeeded in doing something that the state of connecticut had been unable to do for almost one hundred years he found a contemporaneous newspaper account twenty four hours later next day's bridgeport herald evening post local boy flies over this is what john brown was looking at that what you're looking at right there see there's a little red in and he asked the curator at the museum for a magnifying glass when the guy brought in the magnifying glass he said i need this photograph i need this enlarged the guy's symbol we can enlarge it but maybe the local police station can so they went over the local police station they couldn't and larger but they said maybe the the equivalent of the german f b i which is a few miles away will drive you over there they could they could and they did so they enlarged it thirty three percent and then john brown was looking at now that might still look like a smudge to you but to john brown who your call i said has a photographic memory he was immediately put in mind of page number thirty seven in stella randolph nd book and eyewitness testimony on number twenty one irony of ironies which was a bank teller the best of his recollection what had landed back in bridgeport at five hundred and thirty he said that as he was fumbling around with his keys to unlock the front door he was startled to hear what he said sounded like a lawnmower over my head but he said as i brought my head up i couldn't see it but what i did immediately see was a man with a box camera on a tripod in the building across the street we don't know whether that man exists we don't know whether or not he clicked the shutter if he did john brown thought he might be looking at the only known photograph of gustav whitehead flight that morning which would have been number twenty one coming to rest at a vacant lot directly across the street bible of world aviation the editors were meeting at an air show in march in two thousand and thirteen in frankfurt germany john brown got in touch and he asked them if he could have a meeting with them he said i am in possession of some compelling evidence that has to do with st flight and they gave him twenty minutes on their schedule he met with them ninety minutes later the meeting broke up three months later the centennial edition of jane's hit the newsstands and in it the editorial editors  that is all connecticut had to here for one hundred years they've been told by ohio by north carolina by the smithsonian to get lost with whatever you're smoking up there in connecticut and in june rd scene the connecticut state assembly without a single dissenting vote trying doing that with any piece of legislation today passed a bill which today makes connecticut the only state in america that does not recognize the wright brothers as st inflight now so the question as we finish should this change history should this change is true how many of you think based on what you've you've you've heard today that this should change how we look at st place how many of you think it should i'll tell you why you know the wright brothers understood the wright brothers understood in december one thousand of that if they were going to have proof you know the wright brothers were very savvy you know you when you anybody read the the wright brothers the they very sad i have no doubt today if they were doing st like today orville would have been live tweeting as he flew in the serious and they were very savvy and they understood they had a they had a they had a detailed list of all the media outlets in terms of their reach right that would be contacted in order once they achieve st like they had three separate photographers at three key vantage points on the dunes that day ironically only one of them got a flight but that's all they needed they understood that at that time in one thousand and three there was only one way one way to have in controversial bill evidence that was a photograph whitehead may not have spoken english he was no dummy he understood the exact same thing he didn't want a photograph and it worked the wright brothers got the photograph my feeling is so if you ask me should it change history not without a photograph not without physical evidence i just don't think we can do it without physical evidence if you ask me do i think there is an overwhelming possibility that gustav flew before the wright brothers absalom so given the fact that history has not been changed if you go to kitty hawk today maybe some of you have you will find this soaring monument to the to the wright brothers if you go to bridgeport connecticut today you will find somewhat less  right yeah if you get to that intersection pray for a red light because it goes by very quickly it took connecticut another year and a half just appropriate the money to inscribe the marble at the bottom ok but nonetheless as i finish a finish with the same way that i finished the chapter unweighted in the book which we've been talking now about the story of the stuff wait and we've been talking about how it has been looked at and studied by augustus due to sions you know like the smithsonian and world experts and government entities and so forth and so on but you know there is one single spot on the face of the earth only two and a half almost less than three square miles that has not needed any experts to tell them where the wife  you know in bridgeport connecticut there has been oral history and you know oral history has been used to stand up in oral history you know we joke you know you joke about you know  talking about the fish he caught and it grows by you know seven inches every time he tells the story but the point is when it comes to oral history there is a nugget that is almost always always true at its core because it's been handed down orally faithfully generation to generation and in bridgeport connecticut for over one hundred years going on for generations now they have told the story that in bridgeport connecticut on a hot august day in one thousand and one a poor german immigrant chasing his dream rose into the air in a plane that he built with his hands and he flew here there is however eleven dollars point in which everybody in connecticut where there in the bridgeport and not everybody these days agrees  thank you so if anybody has a question or two i'm happy to take a few minutes for questions don't have to but yes  quote i'm sorry the question was was it whitehead himself who flew the plane and yes it was it was anyone else anybody else yes ma'am pepys and sally's yeah in new haven oh that's a feud you should know about so so you know what's to street in new haven you know is the center of the italian community in new haven and frank pepe italian immigrant he came over in the twenty's he was a bread maker apprentice to a bread maker and he his wife in him decided you know instead of just making bread we should make pizza pizza at that time this is hard to believe right pizza was not known in america it just wasn't that wasn't the thing in fact you know pizza in its early days pizza you know is is is born in naples italy and it was a real blue collar kind of food it was can that was looked down upon by the romans who for instance you know you look down upon it because it was the kind of thing that laborers could just grab a slab and eat you know while they were on the run so it wasn't considered something you sat down and ate for dinner but nonetheless frank pepe in his one thought you know we should do that so they did they opened up they opened up a pizzeria on almost a street and frank pepe hired his nephew cell that was not his uncle frank and open up his own pizzeria that's great that's great thing was sally apparently didn't like to go very far so he opened up his own pizzeria at the other end of the street and thus ensuring now yeah just ensuring now about one hundred years of pizza feuding frank pepys and there's sally's at the other end of the street but i'll tell you one thing there's sally some bobby work in the piece of it which is the original of it it is i can i can actually say that it is anybody everything you've write can yeah yeah i'm partial sally's but that's just that's just me i mean sally's to me is just i don't know it's just kind of more of a no frills but both are delicious either one take your pick best pizza i've ever had in my life so if you ever run in and check it out i'm glad you asked anybody else anybody else yeah yeah robert because i know we've done that story on chronicle but i did but i say everybody has something to google when they get home now we've done them on chronicle but i didn't personally yes yeah right right you got the secret yeah yeah yeah i don't i don't yes do you know oh oh robert thank you i'm embarrassed to said don't know i didn't listen i said there's this there's lots of wonderful feuds like that it's very important to me it's very important to me to write so steve's and harold's was you know had to do with the fact that steve was unable once he he closed and then he wanted to reopen he was unable to use the name yeah so that was right right yes ma the about the way oh do move this because you know i have to leave some things for you to read in the book if i give the milk away you know that i know there's a whole chapter on the feud in the book a whole chapter yes should that they had never somehow memorialized their native son and other cities baltimore washington other places that he went have and boston had never the reason for that is that polk hated boston so it wasn't the boston hated him but poet had a very very you know if he was on facebook today and talked about his relationship with boston they'd say it's complicated he did not like birthday they find decide enough is enough we should really memorialize poe a fun one of a woman stephanie rock nyack who's teaches in new york state and she won the competition to design that that sculpture which is life size which is unusual you know normally full sized sculptures statues of of people are normally about a drop bigger they're created three times bigger so that you can more appreciate it was relatively diminutive he was fifty six barely fifty six and it's actual size but what's great about it is she told me on the phone she said you know they they said we have one single one single thing that you are tasked with you can do whatever you want use whatever materials you want do whatever you want with it but there's one thing you have to do she said what's that she said they said somehow in your sculpture you have to incorporate his complex and troubled relationship with boston she said oh thanks so you know as she said she said you know what i did not want to like have a tablet underneath with you know twenty seven lines of copy explaining it so she she came up with if you haven't seen it you'll see what i mean it's at the edge of the common on the other side of the street there and and she came up with a wonderful way of incorporating it was what she did was post so if the city's over here right downtown he has his back to the city and he's facing where the home his his his the where he was born the house where he was born in south go he's facing that house and he's rushing toward it and he's dropping out of his valise is all kinds of things that are associated with pole like a heart and a raven you know and but his back is to the city so without saying a word you know she found this wonderful way of incorporating  yeah yeah i should've thought of that now that you mention it but how did i select you know i kind of looked at ones that had some some relative universal appeal which that would have that would well when i started writing the book i would get like e mails and so on people would say oh if you want to feud you should do my uncle fred and my aunt i'm listening ok that's not quite going to work but then that that that does fit the bill but there are ones volume to write but there are ones that occurred to me afterward that i can't believe i left out like you know there's a wonderful long running feud between marblehead and salem over who where the u s navy was beverly i'm sorry beverly in marblehead and you're absolutely right and i wish i had that's one that just slipped my mind but you have volume to anyone else as we finish so i want to thank you again on a really crappy day for coming out i really appreciate it thank you thank you and if you if you'll permit me just twenty five seconds of shameless commerce i do have all of my books with me today not just wicked pissed but i have my most recent book which i talk here in november about about doing with general stores i have my st book knowing the notebook which is my only hardcover if you would like to purchase a book i'll set up camp back there for a little bit come by be happy to sign a book for you whether you buy a book or not at the far end of the table i have a sign up sheet for my newsletter if you'd like to give me your email address i will put you on the newsletter which i love to sort of communicate with people when i have a like i do now with another book  project in the works communicate with what's going on so if you give me your email address there's a five thousand and fifty shot you'll never hear from me again but i should say that thank you very much