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Pastimes : Laughter is the Best Medicine - Tell us a joke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth Kirk who wrote (32927)	1/17/2005 2:34:44 PM
From: Jagfan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 62568

Depending on which site you read; The origin and true meaning of this phrase is actually totally unrelated to any form of animal or its testicles. Back in time to the period of the Napoleonic War, the great gunships of this time carried many cannons on various gun decks. As an efficient method of storage and delivery of cannon balls to the cannon for firing, a "Monkey" (this term is used to define a table and/ or a rail) made of brass was used to hold the balls. In very cold temperatures the brass would contract or even break thus allowing the cannon balls to roll off the Monkey onto the gun deck. Hence the sailors would say "it is cold enough to freeze the balls off a Brass Monkey". brassmonkeys.co.uk or The whole story is full of logical holes: would they pile shot into a pyramid? (hugely unsafe on a rolling and pitching deck); why a brass plate? (too expensive, and unnecessary: they actually used wooden frames with holes in, called garlands, fixed to the sides of the ship); was the plate and pile together actually called a monkey? (no evidence, as I say); would cold weather cause such shrinkage as to cause balls to fall off? (highly improbable, as all the cannon balls would reduce in size equally and the differential movement between the brass plate and the iron balls would be only a fraction of a millimetre). OJ:A busload of politicians were driving down a country road, when suddenly the bus ran off the road and crashed into an old farmer's barn. The old farmer got off his tractor and went to investigate. Soon he dug a hole and buried the politicians. A few days later, the local sheriff came out, saw the crashed bus and asked the old farmer where all the politicians had gone. The old farmer told him he had buried them. The sheriff asked the old farmer, "Lordy, were they ALL dead?" The old farmer said, "Well, some of them said they weren't, but you know how them crooked politicians lie."