Toward the end of his Independence Day speech on Thursday, President Trump appeared to rewrite history.

“ The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown,” he said. “ Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rocket’s red glare, it had nothing but victory.”

Notice anything? No, not the sudden jump from the Revolutionary War to a battle decades later. The part about the … airports: The era Mr. Trump was referring to predated human flight by nearly a century, so there were no airports to seize.

But don’t take our word for it. Here’s Mr. Trump himself, speaking about 15 minutes earlier:

“On a cold December morning in 1903, a miracle occurred over the dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, when two bicycle makers from Ohio defied gravity with a 12-horsepower engine, wings made of cotton and just a few dollars in their pockets,” he said, alluding to the first successful airplane flight.