From a cross-border Confederate attack to the underdressed men from Maple Corner, It Happened in Vermont looks at intriguing people and episodes from the history of the Green Mountain State.

• Learn why a militia sent to defuse a dangerous mob of striking miners ended up handing out their own rations.
• Read about the shocking “ball of light” that descended upon early twentieth-century Burlington, exploded—knocking a horse senseless—and then rapidly shot back up into the sky.
• Follow two of America’s founding fathers as they traveled through the state, revelling over the region’s flora and fauna and recording their impressions of its residents.
• Discover what caused “the year without a summer,” when trees turned black and crops fell victim to intermittent hard frosts and snowstorms interrupted by short intervals of intense heat and drought
• Relive the terrible flood of 1927 that wreaked havoc in communities along the Winooski River and its tributaries, killing eighty-two people and washing away homes, bridges, and railroad tracks

Mark Bushnell worked for a dozen years as an editor for Vermont newspapers, then turned to freelance writing in 2002. He is the author of Hidden History of Vermont and Discover Vermont! The Vermont Life Guide to Exploring Our Rural Landscape, and lives in Middlesex, Vermont, with his wife and son.