145 Fun Facts About Vermont

Which city serves as Vermont's state capital?

Montpelier has fewer than 9,000 people, the smallest of any US state capital; it was chosen in 1805, and its townspeople paid for the first State House themselves.

Which horse breed, developed in Vermont, became the official state animal in 1961?

The Morgan Horse breed traces to one stallion, Figure, foaled in 1789 and handed to Justin Morgan three years later as payment of a debt; the breed took his new owner's name.

Vermont became the 14th state in 1791; which state followed as the 15th the next year?

Kentucky won approval from Congress two weeks before Vermont did, in February 1791, but its statehood was set for June 1792, so Vermont got in first.

What is the highest natural point in Vermont?

Mount Mansfield's ridge looks like a face in profile, so its summits are called the Forehead, Nose, Chin and Adam's Apple; unlike on most faces, the Chin is the highest, at 4,393 feet.

Vermont sugar-on-snow parties pair hot maple syrup with doughnuts and what?

Pickles, sour dills by tradition, are there to cut the intense sweetness of the syrup, which sets into chewy taffy on the snow; Vermont makes more maple syrup than any other state.

What is the popular name for the legendary monster said to inhabit Vermont's largest lake?

Champy, also called Champ, is the monster said to live in Lake Champlain; more than 300 sightings have been reported, and the legend draws tourists to Burlington and Plattsburgh.

Vermont was one of the first states to ban what form of outdoor advertising statewide?

Billboards have been outlawed along Vermont's roads since 1968, on the argument that they hid the scenery visitors came for; only Hawaii, Alaska and Maine have similar statewide bans.

What is the most populous city in Vermont?

Burlington has only about 45,000 people, the least populous 'largest city' of any state; Bernie Sanders became its mayor in 1981 by a margin of just ten votes.

What is the official state motto of Vermont?

Freedom and Unity sits on Vermont's Great Seal, designed by Ira Allen, Ethan's brother, and accepted in 1779, twelve years before statehood; it asks Vermonters to guard their liberty yet work together.

Which bird is designated as Vermont's official state bird?

The Hermit Thrush won only after a fight in the legislature: opponents objected that it leaves Vermont every winter, and many lawmakers wanted the blue jay instead.

What is Vermont's official state flower?

Red Clover is not a Vermont native: it comes from Europe and western Asia, was planted as a forage crop, and escaped into the state's hayfields and roadsides.

What type of tree is Vermont's official state tree?

Sugar Maple sap flows only when freezing nights are followed by thawing days, which is why Vermont's sugaring season is squeezed into four to six weeks at winter's end.

Which U.S. President was born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont?

Calvin Coolidge, the only president born on the Fourth of July, came home as president in 1924 and ran his Summer White House from the dance hall over the village store.

Ethan Allen's militia formed around 1770 mainly to do what?

Defending land grants against New York claims meant driving off that colony's surveyors and settlers, sometimes with arson and mob violence; New York had re-granted farms that settlers already held.

Which large lake forms much of Vermont's western border?

Lake Champlain was officially a Great Lake for 18 days in March 1998: one line in a federal funding bill said so, until an uproar got the title withdrawn.

Vermont's three official state rocks are granite, marble and which other?

Slate was named beside granite and marble in a 1992 law; the slate belt around Poultney drew so many quarrymen from Wales in the 1800s that Welsh surnames are still common there.

Which Vermont dairy cooperative, started by 94 farmers in its namesake town, is best known for cheddar?

Cabot Creamery began when 94 farmers pooled $3,700, each paying by the size of his herd; it churned butter for about a decade before making any cheese.

What is the official state insect of Vermont?

The Honey Bee, state insect since 1978, is not native to America at all: the first hives were shipped from England to Virginia in 1622.

Which Vermont company opened in 1978 in a renovated gas station after its founders gave up on selling bagels?

Ben & Jerry's founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield found bagel equipment too expensive, so they took a Penn State correspondence course in ice-cream making instead.

The Revolutionary War's Battle of Bennington largely took place in which present-day state, near Vermont's border?

New York's hamlet of Walloomsac saw the fighting in August 1777; the battle carries Bennington's name because the supply depot there, about ten miles east, was the raiders' target.

What is Vermont's official state beverage?

Milk became the state beverage in 1983, when dairying led Vermont's farm economy; since 1947 the state has lost about 95 percent of its dairy farms.

Which president, sworn in after James Garfield's assassination in 1881, was born in Fairfield, Vermont?

Chester A. Arthur's opponents spread a rumor that he had really been born on foreign soil, which would have kept him from the presidency; the story never took hold.

What is the official state fruit of Vermont?

The apple became Vermont's state fruit in 1999; the state's orchards mostly grow McIntosh, and many have shifted to cider and pick-your-own as consumer tastes moved to newer varieties.

Vermont's 1777 constitution was the first in North America to take what step?

Abolish slavery: the 1777 constitution barred holding men past 21 or women past 18 in bondage, a first in North America, though violations went on for years.

In 2019, nearly all the electricity generated inside Vermont came from which type of source, the highest share of any state?

Renewable power made up 99.9% of the electricity generated in Vermont, yet the state used about three times more than it made and had to import the rest.

What is Vermont's official state reptile?

The Painted Turtle became Vermont's state reptile in 1994 after pupils at Cornwall Elementary School suggested it to the legislature.

What is the official state pie of Vermont?

Apple Pie became the state pie in 1999; the act asks for a 'good faith' effort to serve it with a slice of cheddar of at least half an ounce or a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Which of these states shares a border with Vermont?

Massachusetts built Vermont's first permanent European settlement: its militia raised Fort Dummer near Brattleboro in 1724, on land that colony then administered.

Which of these states has less land than Vermont, the 43rd-largest?

New Jersey has roughly 7,400 square miles of land to Vermont's 9,200, yet it is the most densely populated state in the country.

At the 2020 census, which was the only state with fewer residents than Vermont?

Wyoming counted about 577,000 people in 2020 to Vermont's 643,000, even though it is the tenth-largest state by area and roughly ten times Vermont's size.

Which native trout is Vermont's official state cold-water fish?

Brook Trout are the smallest of Vermont's native salmon relatives and are really char, not true trout; brown trout were brought from Europe and rainbows from the Pacific coast.

What is the official state warm-water fish of Vermont?

The walleye was named Vermont's state warm-water fish in 1978, the same year the brook trout was designated the state cold-water fish.

What is the official state gem of Vermont?

The Grossular Garnet was adopted as Vermont's state gem in 1991, with specimens from the Belvidere Mine being particularly notable.

The Vermont State House dome is covered in what precious material?

Gold leaf reached the dome only in the early 1900s; before that its copper-clad roof was painted dark red to look like terracotta tile.

Which French explorer is sometimes credited with coining the name 'Vermont'?

While the name 'Vermont' (from 'Verd Mont') didn't officially appear until 1777, French explorer Samuel de Champlain is sometimes credited with the inspiration.

From 1777 to 1791, before it joined the Union, what was Vermont?

An independent republic for 14 years, Vermont struck its own copper coins, and its leaders even held secret talks with the British about returning to the empire.

The 1944 standard 'Moonlight in Vermont' is unusual among pop hits because its lyrics have no what?

Rhymes are missing from every line: lyricist John Blackburn noticed after twelve bars that nothing rhymed and chose to keep it that way, and each verse is also a haiku.

Which major river forms Vermont's entire eastern border?

The Connecticut River belongs almost wholly to the state on the far bank: a 1933 Supreme Court ruling put the boundary at the low-water mark on Vermont's side.

What is the official state vegetable of Vermont?

The Gilfeather turnip, named Vermont's state vegetable in 2016, was bred by farmer John Gilfeather of Wardsboro in the early 1900s; the town holds a turnip festival each October.

What name do Vermonters give the 'fifth season' that arrives between winter and spring?

Mud season comes when frozen ground thaws from the top down and dirt roads turn to soup; rebuilding one to stay passable can cost a Vermont town up to $140,000 a mile.

Vermont's Isle La Motte preserves the 480-million-year-old fossil remains of what, among the oldest known?

An ocean reef grew here when the land lay under a shallow tropical sea; its black limestone polishes up to show the white spirals of fossil snail shells.

Which Latin motto did Vermont officially adopt in 2015?

'Stella quarta decima fulgeat', 'May the fourteenth star shine bright', echoes the legend on the copper coins Vermont struck in 1785 and 1786, when it hoped to become the fourteenth state.

Vermont, now about three-quarters forest, was largely cleared by the 1880s to graze which animal?

Sheep outnumbered Vermonters nearly six to one by 1840, after the Merino breed arrived; when cheaper western wool killed the trade, the pastures were abandoned and the forest grew back.

What animal is Vermont's official state marine fossil, unearthed in 1849 during railroad construction?

The Beluga whale skeleton turned up near Charlotte, far from any ocean, and was first taken for a horse; it helped show that a sea once filled the valley.

Vermont is the only one of the six New England states that is what?

Landlocked Vermont, the one New England state with no seacoast, still got a water route to the sea in 1823, when a canal linked its big western lake to the Hudson.

Which Vermont ski resort is known as the 'Beast of the East'?

Killington earns the name with size, as the largest ski area in the eastern US, and with snowmaking heavy enough to host World Cup races in November and stay open into late May.

Which mountain pass on Vermont Route 108 closes to cars every winter?

Smugglers' Notch got its name after Jefferson's 1807 embargo, when Vermonters drove cattle and goods through it toward Montreal; during Prohibition, liquor came back the other way.

In May 1775, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold seized which lightly held British post?

Fort Ticonderoga fell almost without a fight; Henry Knox later hauled its cannon overland to Boston, where they forced the British to give up the city.

Admiral George Dewey, born across the street from Vermont's State House, sank which country's Pacific fleet in 1898?

Spain lost its whole Pacific squadron at Manila Bay without one American combat death; Dewey was later made Admiral of the Navy, a rank no one else has held.

Vermont congressman Matthew Lyon won re-election in 1798 from where?

A jail cell in Vergennes held Lyon after his Sedition Act conviction for attacking President Adams in print; his district's voters sent him back to Congress anyway.

In 1864, Confederate soldiers based in Canada descended on St. Albans, Vermont, to do what?

Rob its banks they did, three at once, to fill the Confederate treasury and draw Union troops north; the raiders were later arrested and $88,000 of the haul recovered.

In 1923, which relative swore in a new US president by lamplight at Plymouth Notch?

His father, a Vermont notary public, read the oath at 2:47 a.m. by a kerosene lamp; a federal judge quietly repeated it in the capital, in case a state official's version did not count.

Vermont's 306-foot Bennington Battle Monument, finished in 1889, was built in what shape?

A stone obelisk, it was the tallest battle monument in the world when it went up; President Benjamin Harrison came to dedicate it in 1891.

Americans at Hubbardton, Vermont's only Revolutionary War battle, delayed which British general's 1777 invasion?

Burgoyne's pursuing troops caught Seth Warner's rear guard on July 7, 1777; the Americans were driven off, but the British were too battered to chase the main army.

Which Vermont city hosts the annual Vermont State Fair?

Rutland's fair began in 1846 as a one-day show in a field near Castleton; within three years the railroad was adding cars to carry the crowds.

The statue atop the Vermont State House dome represents which Roman goddess?

Ceres, goddess of agriculture, first topped the dome in 1858; when that statue rotted, the State House's 87-year-old sergeant-at-arms carved its replacement himself in 1938.

In 2000, Vermont was the first state to offer same-sex couples what?

Civil unions were the legislature's answer to a 1999 state supreme court order to extend marriage's benefits; in 2009 lawmakers overrode a veto to allow marriage itself.

After five terms as Vermont's governor, Howard Dean chaired which body from 2005 to 2009?

Dean, a physician, chaired the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009 and pushed the 50-state strategy that preceded the party's 2006 and 2008 gains.

Madeleine Kunin of Vermont was the first woman in US history to do what?

Kunin was the first woman to be elected a state governor three times, in 1984, 1986 and 1988; she later went back as US ambassador to Switzerland, where she was born.

Longtime Vermont senator Patrick Leahy is a devoted fan of which comic-book character?

Leahy is a lifelong Batman fan; he wrote forewords to several Batman collections and took cameo roles in The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.

Jericho's Wilson Bentley earned his nickname by being first to photograph what in detail?

'Snowflake' Bentley caught snowflakes on black velvet and photographed them before they melted, beginning in 1885, popularizing the idea that no two are alike.

John Deere, born in Vermont in 1804, invented the first commercially successful what?

Deere, a blacksmith who moved west, built his first steel plow in Grand Detour, Illinois, in 1837; its polished blade shed the sticky prairie soil that clogged cast-iron plows.

Which Vermont town is the birthplace of Latter-day Saint founder Joseph Smith?

Smith was born in Sharon on December 23, 1805, on the town line with Royalton; a granite obelisk marks the site, and the family moved to western New York after the 1816 crop failures.

Vermont's Justin Morrill is best remembered for which 1862 federal program?

Land-grant colleges were the work of a man who never attended one: Morrill, a blacksmith's son, was largely self-taught, and his 1862 act helped found public colleges across the country.

Robert Frost taught most summers from 1921 to 1962 at which mountain-campus program in Ripton?

The Bread Loaf School of English drew Frost to Ripton for some 42 summers, where he stayed in a rustic cabin; in 1961 the legislature created the post of Vermont poet laureate for him.

Rudyard Kipling wrote which classic while living near Brattleboro in the 1890s?

The Jungle Book came out of Kipling's years at Naulakha, the house he likened to a ship; a quarrel with his brother-in-law that ended in court drove him from Vermont in 1896.

The von Trapp family of Sound of Music fame settled in which Vermont town?

The von Trapps bought their Stowe farm in 1942, four years after they fled Austria; by 1950 they were taking in guests, and the family house grew into the Trapp Family Lodge.

Phish played its first concert in December 1983 in what kind of UVM venue?

A campus cafeteria, Harris-Millis, hosted the all-covers set; short of gear, the band used a hockey stick as a microphone stand, and the house music was reportedly turned up to drown them out.

Which conglomerate bought Vermont's best-known ice cream brand in 2000?

Unilever paid about $326 million and agreed to keep an independent board guarding the brand's social mission; in 2025 it spun off its whole ice cream division as a separate company.

Which winter-sports brand did Jake Carpenter launch from Londonderry, Vermont, in 1977 under his own middle name?

Burton was Jake Burton Carpenter's middle name; he had left a Manhattan investment bank and set about improving the Snurfer, an earlier design steered with a rope.

A Vermont specialty coffee roaster renamed itself in 2014 after which single-serve brand it had bought?

Keurig's pod brewers had outgrown the coffee business that owned them: the roaster bought the brewer maker in 2006 and took its name eight years later.

Vermont's Bread and Puppet Theater is named for what custom?

Sharing free bread at shows expresses the troupe's belief that art should be as basic to life as bread; it has worked from a farm in Glover since the 1970s.

Founded in 1800, which school was the first operating college in Vermont?

Middlebury College was chartered in 1800 and held classes before UVM, chartered nine years earlier; its first commencement in 1802 graduated a single student, Aaron Petty.

Vermont Yankee, shut down in 2014 after 42 years, was what kind of plant?

Nuclear power from Vernon ended when the plant's own owner closed it, undercut by cheap natural gas, after the company had beaten the state's attempt to shut it down in court.

Lake Memphremagog stretches from Newport, Vermont, into which Canadian province?

Quebec holds about three-quarters of the lake's surface, yet three-quarters of the land that drains into it lies in Vermont.

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House in Derby Line is built directly on top of what?

The Canada-US border crosses the floor as a black line; the building was put there on purpose in 1904, with the stage in Canada and most of the seats in Vermont.

Vermont's Long Trail, America's oldest long-distance hiking path, was the inspiration for which longer trail?

The Appalachian Trail borrows the Long Trail's route for about 100 miles in southern Vermont; volunteers built the older path between 1910 and 1930, the full length of the state.

Mad River Glen is one of only three US ski areas that completely ban what?

Snowboarding was allowed at Mad River Glen for a few seasons from 1986, until a heated dispute led owner Betsy Pratt to ban it; the skiers' cooperative that bought the area in 1995 kept the ban.

Which Vermont resort has the state's only aerial tram and was hit by an EB-5 visa fraud?

Jay Peak was seized by federal officials in 2016 after its owner diverted millions raised from foreign investors seeking visas; he went to prison, and the resort was sold in 2022.

Which Vermont peak appears on the state's 2001 commemorative quarter?

Camel's Hump was 'Camel's Rump' on Ira Allen's 1798 map, and the politer name caught on only around 1830; the quarter's panel picked its profile as wild and natural, like Vermont.

Which inventor, born in Halifax, Vermont, in 1811, made tall buildings practical with his safety elevator?

Elisha Otis devised a brake that stops an elevator if its hoisting rope breaks; after he demonstrated it at the Crystal Palace exhibition in 1854, orders began to climb.

The Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge, once America's longest, joins Vermont to which state?

New Hampshire has owned the 449-foot bridge since 1936; in its toll days, walkers paid two cents to cross into 'wet' Cornish but three cents to come back to dry Windsor.

America's first ski rope tow, set up near Woodstock in 1934, was powered by what?

A Ford Model T engine drove the rope on Clinton Gilbert's farm in January 1934; an electric motor soon replaced it, and the operator later moved to a steeper hill nearby that became Suicide Six.

Bag Balm, the Lyndonville salve, was developed in 1899 to soothe what?

Cows' udders were Bag Balm's whole market at first; then farm wives noticed how soft it left their husbands' hands and began using the salve themselves.

The Vermont Country Store, famous for its catalog, opened in 1946 in which village?

Vrest Orton and his wife Mildred opened the Vermont Country Store in Weston village in 1946, reviving the old-fashioned general store and selling by mail-order catalog nationwide.

On average, how many gallons of maple sap must Vermont sugar makers boil down to make one gallon of syrup?

40 gallons is the usual figure, because sap is only about 2 percent sugar; depending on the trees and the season it can take anywhere from 20 to 100.

Heady Topper, the cult double IPA, is brewed by which Vermont brewery?

The Alchemist began as a Waterbury brewpub in 2003 and opened a production brewery in August 2011; that same month Hurricane Irene destroyed the pub, and the canned beer carried on.

Hope Cemetery, famed for carved memorials, is in which 'Granite Capital of the World'?

Barre's granite sheds drew skilled carvers from Italy, and the dust gave many of them fatal silicosis; an estimated three-quarters of Hope Cemetery's stones were designed by the people beneath them.

Dorset, site of America's oldest marble quarry, is the birthplace of a co-founder of what?

Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson was born in 1895 in the inn and tavern his parents ran in East Dorset; his great-grandfather had opened the village's marble quarry.

Senator George Aiken's 1949 nickname for Vermont's three northeastern counties is the 'Northeast' what?

Kingdom was the coinage of a senator who liked to fish there, and it stuck so well that Vermonters now call the three counties simply 'the Kingdom'.

The Bennington Museum holds the largest public collection of which folk painter's work?

Grandma Moses took up painting in earnest at 78, after arthritis made embroidery too painful; the museum later moved the schoolhouse she had attended onto its grounds.

Hildene, the estate in Manchester, was the summer home of which president's son?

Abraham Lincoln's son Robert first saw Manchester on a Civil War summer visit with his mother and brother Tad; he returned four decades later to build Hildene, moving in during 1905.

Thanks to its Act 250 land-use law, Vermont was the last state to get which retailer?

Walmart reached Vermont only in 1995, the last state it entered; Act 250, passed in 1970, was written to discourage sprawl and steer major growth into places already built up.

What disaster killed at least 84 people in Vermont and wrecked over 1,200 bridges in November 1927?

Flood waters killed the lieutenant governor among others, and rebuilding the bridges cost so much that the state took the job of roads and bridges over from the towns.

Bernie Sanders holds which record in US congressional history?

Sanders, the longest-serving independent in congressional history, ran in the Democratic primary for his 2006 Senate race, won it, and then declined the party's nomination, as agreed.

Vermont's capital is the only US state capital without an outlet of which fast-food giant?

McDonald's has no outlet in America's least populous state capital, a city of about 8,000 people that has no Starbucks either.

Which Netflix series starring Jenna Ortega is set at Nevermore Academy in Jericho, Vermont?

Wednesday never filmed in Vermont: its first season was shot in Romania, with Cantacuzino Castle standing in for Nevermore Academy.

Which garment was first stitched from two jockstraps at the University of Vermont in 1977?

The sports bra began as the 'jockbra', sewn in the university theater's costume shop, and one of the originals is bronzed and on display there.

Which railroad foreman survived an iron rod through his skull near Cavendish, Vermont, in 1848?

Phineas Gage spoke within minutes and walked with little help, and the change in his personality made him one of the most famous cases in neuroscience.

Which 1989 Robin Williams film is set at Welton Academy, a strict boys' boarding school in Vermont?

Dead Poets Society never filmed in New England: its Vermont campus of 1959 was shot at locations around Delaware over the winter of 1988–89.

Which Whitingham, Vermont native led the Mormon pioneers west to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847?

Brigham Young reached the valley on July 24, 1847, a date Utah marks each year as Pioneer Day.

Springfield, Vermont, rolled out a carpet of which color for the 2007 world premiere of The Simpsons Movie?

Yellow replaced the usual red after the Vermont town won a nationwide vote among towns named Springfield for the right to host the first screening.

Which Saturday Evening Post illustrator painted his Four Freedoms series in Arlington, Vermont?

Norman Rockwell used his Arlington neighbors as models, and the four paintings then toured 16 cities and helped sell $132 million in war bonds.

Which 1988 Tim Burton ghost comedy filmed all of its outdoor scenes in East Corinth, Vermont?

Beetlejuice brought a crew back to East Corinth in 2023 to shoot the sequel's exteriors, and the village became a destination for fans of both films.

Vermont Curry, an instant curry roux launched by House Foods in 1963, became a hit in which country?

Japan took to the boxed roux at once, and curry is so widely eaten there that it can be called a national dish.

A Shelburne, Vermont company that began as an open-air market stall in 1983 handcrafts which toy?

Teddy bears became a mail-order business when a tourist asked founder John Sortino to post one home, and each is handcrafted at the Shelburne factory.

Which 1954 Bing Crosby musical ends with snow finally falling on an inn in Pine Tree, Vermont?

White Christmas was the first film released in VistaVision, Paramount's new widescreen process.

Which comedian played an author running the Stratford Inn in rural Vermont in a 1980s CBS sitcom?

Bob Newhart closed the show with one of television's most memorable finales, which revealed all eight seasons to be a dream of his character from an earlier sitcom.

Which Brandon, Vermont native, the 'Little Giant', won an 1858 Senate race after seven famous debates?

Stephen A. Douglas stood just 5 feet 4 inches tall, and two years after that Senate win he lost the presidential election to the same rival.

Elisha Otis of Halifax, Vermont, invented a safety brake that stops which machine from falling?

The elevator took off after Otis demonstrated his brake in public in 1854, and three years later he installed the first passenger version in a store.

Which outfitter, founded in Manchester, Vermont, in 1856, is America's oldest mail-order retailer?

Orvis began as Charles F. Orvis's tackle shop, and in 1966 the company opened its own fly-fishing school in the same town.

Which employee-owned flour company, founded in Boston in 1790, later moved to Vermont?

King Arthur is the oldest flour company in the United States, and it has been wholly owned by its employees since 2004.

Which Olympic slalom champion at 18 in Sochi graduated from Vermont's Burke Mountain Academy?

Mikaela Shiffrin spent most of her last two high-school years racing in Europe yet graduated on time, and her win set a record as the youngest slalom champion the Olympics had seen.

Which exiled Soviet author and Nobel laureate lived quietly in Cavendish, Vermont, from 1976 to 1994?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, was arrested and deported from the Soviet Union in 1974 and went home to Russia twenty years later.

Which author wrote the 1948 short story The Lottery while living in North Bennington, Vermont?

Shirley Jackson first published the story in The New Yorker in June 1948, and it made her reputation as a master of the horror tale.

Darn Tough, launched in 2004 at a mill in Northfield, Vermont, is a brand of which hiking essential?

Socks from the same mill were sold under other retailers' labels through the 1990s, and the US military has accounted for as much as a third of revenue.

Which Hall of Fame catcher, born in Bellows Falls, Vermont, waved his 1975 World Series home run fair?

Carlton Fisk was born in Bellows Falls only because it had the nearest hospital to his family's hometown, and the footage of his waving changed how baseball was televised.

Vermont senator Ralph Flanders introduced the 1954 Senate motion to censure which fellow Republican?

Joseph McCarthy was distracting the country from real Communist gains abroad, Flanders argued, and the Senate censured him that December.

In 1936, Vermont and which other state were the only two to vote against Franklin D. Roosevelt?

Maine and Vermont gave Alf Landon just eight electoral votes between them, inspiring the quip that as one of the pair goes, so goes the other.

Vermont never backed a Democrat for president until which candidate carried the state in a landslide?

Lyndon B. Johnson took 66 percent of Vermont's vote against Barry Goldwater in 1964, ending a Republican streak that ran back to the party's founding.

Which 2011 tropical storm flooded almost every river in Vermont and wrecked historic covered bridges?

Irene dropped up to 11 inches of rain on Vermont, cut off whole towns for days, and damaged or destroyed covered bridges more than a century old.

Vermont's only national historical park pairs the names Marsh and Billings with which wealthy family?

Rockefeller joined the name after Laurance Rockefeller and his wife Mary, a Billings granddaughter, gave the 550-acre Woodstock estate to the nation in 1992.

White marble from Danby, Vermont, built the domed Tidal Basin memorial to which US president?

Thomas Jefferson's memorial uses Vermont's white Imperial Danby marble for its exterior, while the interior is white marble from Georgia.

In 2012 Vermont became the first US state to ban which technique for extracting oil and gas?

Hydraulic fracturing was outlawed as a precaution: Vermont had no known gas reserves that could be fracked when the law was signed.

Which orphan of a 1913 children's novel goes to live with her aunt in fictional Beldingsville, Vermont?

Pollyanna plays the 'Glad Game', hunting for something to be glad about in every setback, and her name became a byword for unfailing optimism.

Which Grammy-nominated folk-pop singer grew up on a tree farm in Strafford, Vermont?

Noah Kahan founded the Busyhead Project to give Vermonters mental health resources, and the governor proclaimed a day in the project's honor in 2024.

Which big cat did University of Vermont students narrowly choose as their mascot in a 1920s ballot?

Catamount beat three rival candidates, a tomcat among them, by just 138 votes to 126, and the first costumed mascot was named Charlie.

Which Vermont holiday on the first Tuesday of March gives state employees a day off for local democracy?

Town Meeting Day sees residents debate and vote on local budgets face to face, and state law lets private employees take unpaid leave to attend.

Vermonter Jody Williams shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her campaign to ban which weapons?

Landmines were outlawed by an international treaty agreed in Oslo in September 1997, and the Nobel committee honored Williams and her campaign three weeks later.

Vermont's Bill Koch became in 1976 the first American to win an Olympic medal in which sport?

Cross-country skiing gave the United States no second Olympic medalist until 2018, 42 years after Koch's silver in the 30-kilometer race.

Which director's crew glued leaves onto bare trees to film The Trouble with Harry in Vermont?

Alfred Hitchcock arrived in late September 1954 expecting full fall color, found hardly any foliage left, and later held the film's world premiere in Vermont.

Which Vermont senator flipped control of the US Senate in 2001 by leaving the Republican Party?

Jim Jeffords made history: it was the first time one senator's switch had ever changed which party controlled the chamber.

Which nation's soldiers built the first European settlement in Vermont, an island fort raised in 1666?

France garrisoned Fort Sainte Anne with about 300 soldiers to guard its colony against the Iroquois, then destroyed and abandoned it within a few years.

Which Algonquian-speaking people call their homeland, including Vermont, Ndakinna, meaning 'our land'?

Abenaki comes from a word meaning 'People of the Dawn Land', and the western bands' main villages stood near present-day Swanton and Newbury.

Which financier, branded the 'Witch of Wall Street', made her home in Bellows Falls, Vermont?

Hetty Green was reckoned the richest woman in America, and Guinness once listed her as the world's greatest miser.

Brandon, Vermont blacksmith Thomas Davenport built and patented which invention in the 1830s?

The electric motor that Davenport built with his wife Emily ran on a battery, and their 1837 patent was the first in America for an electric machine.

Thaddeus Fairbanks, who ran a hemp company in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, invented which business tool?

The platform scale grew out of Fairbanks's frustration with the inaccurate beam scales used on wagonloads of hemp, and it made weighing big loads easy.

The Estey company of Brattleboro, Vermont, built about half a million of which instrument?

Pump organs made Estey one of the largest organ makers in the world, with about 700 workers and customers as far away as Africa and Australia.

Which Danville, Vermont native led the Radical Republicans in the US House during the 1860s?

Thaddeus Stevens chaired the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and battled the president for control of Reconstruction after the Civil War.

In Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, the tuba-playing hero hails from which fictional Vermont hamlet?

Mandrake Falls became an archetype of small-town America on screen, the home of a greeting-card poet who inherits 20 million dollars from his uncle.

Which newspaper editor and 1872 presidential candidate learned printing as an apprentice in East Poultney, Vermont?

Horace Greeley was apprenticed at 15 to the editor of the Northern Spectator, and his own paper later became the highest-circulating in the country.

Which Vermont-born admiral sank or captured Spain's entire Pacific fleet at Manila Bay in 1898?

George Dewey won without a single American combat death and was later made Admiral of the Navy, a rank no one else has ever held.

Vermont's Consuelo Northrop Bailey became in 1954 the first woman in America elected to which state office?

Lieutenant governor capped a run of firsts for Bailey, who had already served as the first woman Speaker of Vermont's House.

Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont, received the first recurring monthly payment from which federal program?

Social Security proved a bargain for Fuller: she paid in $24.75 over three years of work and collected $22,888.92 before dying at the age of 100.

Paul Harris, raised by his grandparents in Vermont, founded which worldwide service club in Chicago in 1905?

Rotary took on its first public service project in 1907, building public toilets in Chicago, and so became the world's first service club.