Gingrich: Left doesn't believe the Wright Brothers invented flying

Newt Gingrich via the Huffington Post:

"The Left has believed for at least forty years now in a concept called Peak Oil that says 'gee, we're about to run out.' Well, it turns out that our reserves in the U.S., because of new technology, which is something that the Left rejects - they don't believe the Wright Brothers invented flying, they don't believe Edison invented electric light, and they don't believe we're about to invent the next generation of interesting things.

I don't think I have met anyone on 'the Left' who seriously disputes the notion that the Wright brothers were the first to succeed at powered flight but as everyone knows, the Montgolfier brothers beat them to 'flight' by more than a century.

Nor have I met anyone who disputes the fact that Thomas Edison made enormous contributions to the development of electric light. But the fact remains that he did not invent electric light. The British inventor Joseph Swan began working on the problem in 1850 and developed a recognizable lightbulb back in 1860. Swan was the first person to live in a house lit by electricity (1880). And even though Edison and Swan both made substantial contributions to making the first practical systems for electric light, there were 22 other people working on incandescent electric lamps before them.

This might seem pedantic, but Gingrich is a professor of history. If he can't make an argument about historical facts with accuracy and precision, then just what is he good for?

It is almost as if Gingrich told someone that the Wright brothers invented 'flight', someone attempted to correct his error, and rather than check the facts for himself Gingrich deduced they were a leftist hater of America. Later on someone must have tried to correct Gingrich on the history of electric light, a second observation that proved the existence of a vast left wing conspiracy.