Did you know it was Thomas Jefferson who first brought mac and cheese to America? While visiting France he fell in love with many of the pasta dishes he had been served. He even brought a pasta machine back with him and first served Mac-and-Cheese at a state dinner in 1802. The history of cheese is full of fascinating trivia like this.

Cheese has been enjoyed for thousands of years, probably as long as humans have been herding animals. Some speculate it may have been first created by accident when milk stored in a ruminant (most likely sheep) stomach curdled from the rennet, an enzyme present in the stomach lining. Others speculate it was discovered after milk was salted or sprinkled with an acid like fruit juice; both of those actions would have caused the milk to curdle as well. It would have been a welcome way to preserve perishable milk.

The first milk used for cheese was from goats or sheep, as these were most prevalent in the Mediterranean areas of the Fertile Crescent. There are ancient Sumerian records going back as far as 4000 BCE showing they ate cheese. Egyptians as well were fond of the stuff, as evidenced in cheesy remains found in clay pots dating to 2300 BCE.

The Bible has references to cheese, with perhaps the most famous tale recounting David carrying cheese to his troops just prior to him slaying Goliath. But, very recently, an even older cheese discovery was made much farther north when a cache of 7500- year-old pottery cheese strainers were found in modern-day Poland. These Neolithic people were dairy farmers, not just hunters, so their relationship with animals is more complex than was once supposed.

Although remains of other dairy farms have been found in Neolithic ruins, this was the first that showed evidence of cheese making. But it was the ultra-organized Romans who first mass-produced cheese. Larger homes had separate rooms for cheese making and storage. Often Romans would age their cheese or smoke it—both practices adding to its shelf life—and they made hundreds of different types. It was a convenient form of protein that their armies could carry with them.

And carry it they did as they trooped across the continent. In this way, their cheese spread throughout Europe, to be mixed and blended with local ways of cheese making. In medieval times, cheese was often made in monasteries that were also making beer and wine. Farmers usually made their own cheese as it was a way to use up and preserve perishable milk. In American history, there several notable cheese tales. Strangely, many of them involve politics. One concerns dairy farmer Colonel Thomas Meacham who hailed from Sandy Creek, New York. He was quite proud of his cheese-making abilities, and in 1835 he held a public celebration in Oswego where he revealed ten cheeses of his own creation. He made two giant wheels of cheese, each weighing in at 750 pounds, for Vice President Martin Van Buren and New York Governor William Macy. The really really big wheel—four feet wide and two feet tall—he made for President Andrew Jackson and sent it to him via schooner. The 1400-pound behemoth was secured with a belt emblazoned with a bust of Jackson and emblems of the 24 states linked on either side. When it arrived in Washington, it was paraded to the White House in a cart drawn by twenty four horses. Quite the spectacle. The reportedly rather stinky cheddar took up residence in the front hall of the White House. It in 1835, but was still there two years later when someone, perhaps Jackson himself, decided to give out what remained—which apparently was still quite a lot—during a celebration in honor of Washington’s birthday.

Ten thousand visitors arrived, knives in hand; they carved it up, ate it up, and even stashed some away. The horde decimated it in under two hours. However, the smell lingered, and when the new president, Van Buren, arrived to take up residence, he reportedly had quite a task removing the smell, whitewashing and repainting the room it had inhabited.

As odd as this story may seem, it was not the first time a giant wheel of cheese had been delivered to a president. Some thirty-four years prior, in Cheshire, Massachusetts (named after the famed cheese making town in England), Reverend John Leland, ardent abolitionist and fierce Jefferson supporter, wanted to pay his newly-elected president a tribute after his recent victory over the Federalist John Adams.

As you can imagine, America has a long and storied relationship with cheese (as well as a reputation for having the biggest of everything), but it's actually the Canadians who hold the top spot when it comes to cheese in terms of size. At the Chicago exhibition of 1893, the Canadians, in a feat of transport engineering, arrived with a 22,000 pound giant cheddar that crashed through the exhibition hall floor while being set up.

And the Canadians still hold the record for the largest cheese: a 57,000 pound monster made in Ontario in 1995.