Bring in the Brass Monkey tonight

Animal · Dec 9, 2009

Stack on the wood,corn propane or what have you we are in for a cold one!.....speaking of cold one I got to go.

kruser · Dec 9, 2009

Heard on the news today that a young kid did stick his tongue to a steel pipe (think it was up by Yorkville, IL). Some things never change!

bradk · Dec 9, 2009

Yep, the FD had to come and pour warm water on the pole to get 'em unstuck.Just like Ralphie!

Heard it on GM America.

kruser · Dec 9, 2009

Great,
Bet my wife and daughter will watch that show again this year!
Course my 12 year old daughter has done simlar things - so maybe it's a learning experience!
Jim

Anonymous-0 · Dec 9, 2009

Yep,,lil girl up the street did that tonight . glass of warm water got her loose . My kids all came screaming about it ..lol

Goose · Dec 9, 2009

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".

Animal · Dec 9, 2009

Goose, you do with your monkey what you wish, but I am going to keep my monkey in balls!

Anonymous-0 · Dec 9, 2009

that's pretty interesting, here I thought it involved a primate!

Irv Plitzuweit · Dec 9, 2009

Click on the following from Truthorfiction.com and see what it says:http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/brassmonkeys.htm

Wesley Stephens · Dec 9, 2009

Our low for tonight is supposed to be 49, then the next 2 nights will be around 30 and we'll go back to the normal upper 30's/mid 50's we see this time of year

glennster · Dec 9, 2009

kruser, it wasnt my fault, I WAS TRIPLE DOG DARED!!!!!!

kruser · Dec 9, 2009

Daughter was only "Double Dog" dared! LOL

PaGlenn · Dec 9, 2009

Hey! what d' ya mean. I like that movie. they play it all day around Christmas. We named one
of our cats Ralph a few years back.

oj · Dec 9, 2009

Goose, i agree completely except for the sea water/rust issue, i believe it was due to the risk of sparking from iron on iron, bearing in mind that there was always gun powder around, and so brass was used as it is non sparking... btw, the lad who carried the powder for the magazine to the guns was called a powder monkey...

Anonymous-0 · Dec 10, 2009

The powder monkey would have been in trouble then.Ohhhhhhhh.

Kansas Cockshutt · Dec 10, 2009

I thought it was Flick who got his tongue stuck?

Anonymous-0 · Dec 11, 2009

When I was about 6 years old a friend had a big brass frog with a pair of balls on it.We spent a lot of time looking at it.We caught a lot of frogs but never found any with balls.The were a lot of small foundries in the 40s and some odd items were cast when the boss wasnt looking.

Bring in the Brass Monkey tonight

Animal

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kruser

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bradk

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kruser

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Anonymous-0

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Goose

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Animal

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Anonymous-0

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Irv Plitzuweit

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Wesley Stephens

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glennster

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kruser

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PaGlenn

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oj

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Kansas Cockshutt

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