Well known for its historic buildings, battlefields, and beaches, Virginia has a colorful and dramatic past. It Happened in Virginia tells the stories of intriguing people and events from the history of this beautiful state, from the first American revolution in 1676 to the capture of a Soviet spy in 1985.

 

Learn how Joel Sweeney invented the banjo and went on to be called “the Pied Piper of Appomattox.” And how Professor Thomas Jonathan Jackson, a teacher at a small military school, earned his own nickname: Stonewall Jackson. Read about a cigarette rolling machine that sparked a vast tobacco fortune, a massive bank embezzlement by the unlikeliest of robbers, and the election of the nation’s first African-American governor.