A story out of Great Britain got me to remembering a hilarious quip that a young typesetter once muttered way back in the old days.

Queen Elizabeth II is now the longest-reigning monarch in British history, having served longer than Queen Victoria, who sat on the throne from 1837 until her death in 1901.

Congrats belong to Her Majesty the Queen.

Queen sets record on UK throne

Back to the quip.

I worked from 1977 until 1984 at a daily newspaper in Oregon City, Ore. The Enterprise-Courier no longer exists, but it once was a feisty little paper that sought to compete under the shadow of the one-time behemoth The Oregonian.

It was an afternoon paper, which meant I got to the office early in the morning to start “stripping the wire” of hard copy and separating the stories into appropriate categories: national, international and state/regional.

I came upon a tidbit that United Press International published daily. It was a factoid, kind of a trivia item. One morning I saw on the wire that Queen Victoria was the longest-serving monarch in Britain. She’d been queen for 63 years.

I turned to one of our typesetters, a quiet young woman whose name escapes me, and mentioned how long Queen V had been on the British throne.

Her response? “You mean she had to hold it that long?”