Seeing as I appear to be one of the resident cynics, I checked out the "brass monkey" story on the popular snopes.com site... sadly it appears that it is not really true. However if you take the time to read their analysis you get to learn about about singeing the hair off a brass monkey.

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-Toast-
"It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit - but none to be offended by them." -- Johnny Hart ("BC", cartoonist, 2000)
"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog: Nobody really enjoys it and the frog generally dies as a result." -- E. B. White