How many cows did it take for England cheesemakers to gift a halfton cheese wheel to Queen Victoria?

What to give the bride and groom on their wedding day? It’s a tough question. For the young Queen Victoria on the occasion of her marriage to Prince Albert, cheesemakers in the West of England collected the milk of 700 dairy cows to produce a wheel of cheddar cheese weighing more than 1,000 pounds that they gave to the couple as a wedding gift.

Trivia question: Which animated duo helped to revive the popularity of Wensleydale cheese?

A) Lilo and Stitch

B) Phineas and Ferb

C) Pinky and the Brain

D) Wallace and Grommit

Most NASCAR races give the winner a trophy. Winners at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia take home a grandfather clock. It’s among the more coveted prizes in racing, not least because Martinsville is the shortest — and some might say most challenging — track on the Sprint Cup circuit. On Sept. 27, 1964, Fred Lorenzen became the first driver to win a Martinsville clock. More than 125 have been awarded since then, including 12 to Richard Petty.

After the United States entered World War I in 1917, men were released from “unnecessary peacetime occupations” so they could join the war effort. Mowing the White House lawn was considered one such unnecessary occupation, so a flock of sheep temporarily replaced the groundskeepers. (President Woodrow Wilson usually gets credit, but the scheme might have been first lady Edith Wilson’s idea.) The sheep kept the grass — and White House expenses — trimmed. Their wool was auctioned to benefit the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

Johannes Gutenberg devised the first operable printing press using mechanical moveable type in the 1440s, adapting his design from the wine presses that he would have known well, living in Mainz, the heart of German wine country. It took close to 100 years for the first printing press in the New World to be put into operation in Mexico City in 1539. Then another 99 — possibly an even 100 — years passed before Harvard College in Cambridge, Mass., opened the first printing press in North America.

There are lots of tiny frogs in the world, but Paedophryne amauensis is the smallest. It measures just 7.7 mm — about 0.3 inch — and can fit on the face of a dime. The Louisiana State University herpetologists who discovered the frog in 2010 heard it before they ever saw it. While studying the wildlife of Papua New Guinea, they became curious about an odd mating call they heard at night. Turns out the big noise came from a very small source.

Slot machines were intended to pay winners in cash. You pop in a nickel, spin the wheels and hope to increase your “investment.” But that changed temporarily in 1909 when local anti-gambling ordinances were enacted throughout the United States — even in Las Vegas. Because there was nothing to prohibit machines paying benefits other than cash, some slots were reconfigured to pay off in chewing gum with cherries, melons and other fruit on the wheels indicating the flavor you’d get if you won.

Trivia answer: Wallace and Grommit helped boost sales of English Wensleydale cheese.

Elman