Rubber Duck Day
January 13 · Level 3 · #1672 of 2238
A day to dig out your favourite yellow bath toy and smile for no reason at all. The duck also has a day job: programmers know it as a patient helper for hunting down bugs.
How it is celebrated: people park a duck on their desk, hand one to a colleague or friend, or let a whole flock float in the bath. Developers explain their code to the duck line by line, and the bug often reveals itself halfway through.
In January 1992 a container fell from a cargo ship into the Pacific, and about 28,800 plastic bath toys, ducks among them, drifted away. Oceanographers followed the toys as they washed ashore for years, and used them to learn more about ocean currents.