crankymessiah wrote:
] ] LONDON, England (Reuters) -- An armada of small, faded
] ] yellow toy ducks is expected to make landfall in Britain
] ] within weeks at the end of an epic 11-year voyage from
] ] the Pacific Ocean.
] ]
] ] They are the survivors of a consignment of 29,000 bath
] ] toys washed overboard from a container ship in 1992 that
] ] have since floated across the ocean, round the United
] ] States, through the Arctic and past Greenland.

My first reaction when I saw this was, "hoax?" But I dug into it, and it seems to be real. There's a webpage here with links to the various stories about the ducks:
 http://www.seabean.com/duckies/

And a "beachcomber" site that even has an executable which tracks the locations of the ducks over time (it ran in full-screen mode on XP, though your mileage may vary on other OSes):

 http://www.beachcombers.org/images/images.htm
(click on North Pacific Toy Spill)

And here's a pic of one of the washed ashore ducks:
 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/31/eveningnews/main566138.shtml

In my mind's eye, I was picturing a flotilla of rubber ducks dotting the waves as far as the eye could see, but it's actually probably more like an asteroid field, where you could go days without seeing one, even if you're right in the center of "duck-density". ;)

Fun story!

(8/11/2003 update: Switched link to point to MSNBC article)

England braces for rubber duck invasion