It's a little colder today

After wading through the history of the Victorian gold rush era (skipping a whole chapter entitled "The Second Parliament", after failing to find the glee in "The First Parliament") I was inclined toward more of a lightweight trifling distraction for my train reading. So picked up ‘White Elephants and Red Herrings’ which is basically a chatty stroll through some common idioms and their origins in the English language.

This morning I relished the nautical chapter. I am a sucker for the habits and superstitions necessitated by the harsh and precarious way of life that brought Europe to the rest of the world (where she imposed herself quite savagely, for the most part.) Anywho, before I detour into controversial territory, I thought I’d share this little nugget as for some reason, reading it made me think of Mattwa. Which is weird, because everyone knows that Evil is our cabin boy.

Freeze the balls off a brass monkey
The gunpowder for the guns on 18th century man-of-war ships was stored centrally and ‘powder monkeys’ (young agile boys) were engaged to fetch the powder and cannonballls from storage to the guns. The cannonballs were stacked and moved around on brass trays with 16 convex indentations that prevented the stack from rolling away. These trays became known as ‘brass monkeys’. On really cold days, the brass would contract, the balls would not sit properly in them and roll all over the place. Hence, the freezing of the balls off the brass monkey.