Back to the drawing board: Ohio debuts Wright Brothers license plate with backwards plane

The Ohio government issued an embarrassing mea culpa this week when it admitted that a newly debuted license plate featured a backwards image of the famous Wright Brothers airplane.

The plate advertises the state as the “birthplace of aviation,” owing to the Wright Brothers’ residency there, particularly their bike shop in Dayton, Ohio, the profits of which financed their flight experiments. 

The initially released image of the license plate depicted a banner trailing off of the Wright Brothers’ plane—except the banner was attached to the front of the plane, not the back. 

In a statement, the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles said on Twitter that it was “aware that the plane on the new Ohio license plate unveiled this morning was oriented in the wrong direction. We regret this mistake and have fixed the image.”

The Ohio BMV said that “the correct design … will be reflected on all new plates issued to Ohio drivers.”