What are ya — yellow? The rubber duck carries filaments of American history in its 'feathers'

NEW YORK (AP) — It's not just a squishy noisemaker. The rubber duck is an American invention with a deep and rich past.

The cute, often yellow toys have seen a resurgence in recent years, especially in tourist shops from the U.S. Open to Buckingham Palace, and are beloved across the world.

The duck’s origin story was forged in fire, according to popular lore. Charles Goodyear, inventor of vulcanized rubber, is said to have shaped leftover rubber into a duck as a chew toy for dogs and a teething aid for babies. (This heritage lives on in one Ohio minor-league baseball team — the Akron RubberDucks.)

Vulcanization made the rubber waterproof and mostly indestructible, but also heavy. It wasn’t until 1931 that Elenore Shannahan revised the design so it would float and become part of bathtime fun. The patent states her toy could “produce a fountain-like effect, and enable the playing of pranks by one person on another by the squirting of a fine stream of spray upon the face or other parts of a person.”

The Walt Disney Co. and Seiberling Latex Products created a floating Donald Duck water toy in 1938, which helped the rubber duck become popular around the globe. The vinyl duck known today traces to sculptor Peter Ganine’s 1947 design, according to St. Neots Museum.

When the rubber duck was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, the museum said its “bright color, smooth texture, and (for some) squeaky or quacky sounds sharpen toddlers’ senses,” solidifying its usefulness around the house.

The bath toy also inspired a Billboard hit. “Rubber Duckie” peaked at No. 16 on the Hot 100 in the magazine’s Sept. 26, 1970, issue. The song earned the first Grammy nomination for Jim Henson, the voice of Ernie on “Sesame Street,” according to the Grammy Awards website.

In 1992, a spill of 29,000 plastic bath toys, including rubber ducks, into the North Pacific Ocean created both a mess and a large scientific experiment, Allison Boyle of the Science Museum in London said on its website. Oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and James Ingraham used reports from beachcombers to track the toys around the world, not only to follow the plastic debris but also to “refine their models of ocean surface currents.”

“Even the cutest of children’s toys plays a role in ocean health,” said Rachel Schoeler, manager of the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup website.

From chew toy to bath toy, Billboard hit to oceanographic tool, the rubber duck has made waves across American history.

Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.

A rubber duck wearing a gold chain necklace and sunglasses is surrounded by smaller ducks in Phoenix, AZ, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

A rubber duck wearing a gold chain necklace is surrounded by smaller ducks in Phoenix, AZ, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

FILE - A small rubber duck sits in the end zone after being thrown from the stands during the second half of an NCAA college football game between Washington and Oregon, in Seattle, Nov. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)

FILE - Rubber ducks float in the current of the Chicago River during the Sixth Annual Greater Chicago Duck Race in Illinois, Sept, 8, 1995. (AP Photo/Beth A.Keiser, File)

A rubber duck wearing a gold chain necklace is surrounded by smaller ducks in Phoenix, AZ, Thursday Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

The Oregon man who fatally shot a teenage gunman to end a deadly rampage at an elementary school last week says he was the children's “last line of defense” and that he regrets not arriving soon enough to save them all.

Kaylub Giamanco, whose two daughters attend Silver Rail Elementary, where the Oct. 15 attack occurred, said he feels like he failed the families of those who died.

“I want to apologize for not saving their babies, that’s probably the biggest thing for me right now,” Giamanco told Oregon Public Broadcasting in an interview published Friday. “The gratitude for saving people’s children is awesome. But there were ones that I didn’t save.”

Three children — ages 5, 8 and 11 — and a teacher were killed at the school in Bend, Oregon, last week when a former student there, 16-year-old Griffin J. John II, blasted his way through locked doors with a shotgun and attacked a special needs classroom. Another student was critically injured and a teacher was injured and hospitalized.

Police say another teacher threw her phone at the attacker and wrestled with him before Giamanco shot and killed him after following the gunman into the building.

Giamanco said he dropped off his daughters at the school that morning before driving to work. A few hours later, the 36-year-old carpenter was passing the school again as he was heading home for lunch.

He said he spotted someone wearing black and carrying a long gun fire shots into a pickup truck and at a person mowing the school's lawn before the shooter climbed a fence and headed toward the school building.

Giamanco said “panic fled into my brain.” He grabbed a .40-caliber handgun from his truck's center console and went after the gunman as he dialed 911. He asked the dispatcher to send help before hanging up his phone.

“I said 'I’m sorry I have to go in. People are going to die,'” Giamanco said in the interview.

As he got closer to the building, Giamanco said, he lay on his stomach and used his elbows to crawl across the ground.

“That’s when I started hearing children pleading for their lives,” he said. “And then I started hearing gunfire and I just started army crawling faster and faster. And I told myself: 'This is probably the last thing that I’m ever going to do.'”

Giamanco said he entered the school through a window that had been shot out. Peeking into a nearby classroom, he saw a teacher grappling with the shooter. He said he faced them both in profile, giving him an open shot.

“I felt like I was the last line of defense between him and the rest of the children,” Giamanco said.

He swung the door open, stepped into the room and fired his gun.

Both the gunman and the teacher dropped to the floor. The teacher bolted from the room as the shooter reached for his shotgun.

“He was scrambling for his weapon,” Giamanco said. “I looked at him and I shot him two more times to make sure that he couldn’t move, because I was afraid of him shooting anybody else.”

Police have said Giamanco was carrying his gun legally in his truck and have credited him and the unarmed teacher who confronted the gunman with saving lives. A day after the shootings, President Donald Trump said that Giamanco was a “great hero” who “took care of business.”

A second teacher in the classroom, Becky Drury, said in a statement Wednesday that she lay on the floor, helplessly playing dead, after being struck at close range by a shotgun blast that nearly severed her left hand.

The teacher who struggled with the shooter hasn't been publicly identified. Giamanco told the public broadcaster that she's “a real true hero” whose actions gave him an opening to kill the attacker.

“I can’t tell you what it feels like to take a life … but I can tell you that I genuinely feel like I was supposed to be there,” Giamanco said. “If I wasn’t there, I just don’t know what would have happened.”

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.

Children place flowers at a makeshift memorial outside Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Ore., Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, a day after a deadly shooting. (AP Photo/Joe Kline)

Police tape is placed outside Silver Rail Elementary school, where a shooting took place, on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026 in Bend, Ore. (AP Photo/Joe Kline)