Does anyone know the origin of the expression, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey"? It has nothing to do with anatomy, animal or human.
In the days of sailing warships, it was desirable to stack cannon balls next to each cannon. The balls themselves couldn't be stacked; they simply rolled around. So a device was made of iron in the shape of a square plate with four indentations on each side to keep the cannon balls from rolling off. This allowed a total of 27 cannon balls to be stacked in a pyramid. This device was called a "monkey", for whatever reason.
There was one problem. Stacking iron cannon balls on an iron monkey in a salt water environment caused both the cannon balls and the monkey to rust badly. The rust problem was solved by making the monkeys out of brass.
One more problem though; upon changes in temperature, iron and brass expand and contract at different rates. If the temperature dropped to a certain point, the brass monkey would contract to a degree where the cannon balls would fall off. Hence, the expression, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey".
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Today's Featured Article - Gatherin of the Orange - by Rick Nikolich. In July of 1998 I was talking to fellow Allis Chalmers collector Mike Schilling about the annual "Gathering of The Orange" AC show coming up in August of 1999. He got this wild idea that we should get a convoy of AC tractors and drive them from Charlotte, Michigan 105 miles to LaGrange, Indiana.
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