Who knew? Emoticons have a birthday, and it’s September 19.
The little smiley face 🙂 and its cousins turn 25 this year. (You’re not supposed to call them smiley faces though. Apparently that word is copyrighted. That’s why they have the robot-like name, Emoticons.)
Yes, it was back in 1982 when Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University proposed the first use:
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman 🙂
From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
🙂
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use
😦
According to a study from some corporation with NBTD* , 48 percent of respondents over 50 claim to use emoticons everyday. Those aged 19 to 25 use emoticons even more, with 68 percent of respondents in that age group reporting everyday usage.
You couldn’t possibly want to know more about emoticons, could you?
Oh, I know… you want to see emoticons come to life, right?
Talk about useless knowledge. This has to be right up there with why Mary Janes are called Mary Janes.
* nothing better to do
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
Years ago when I was actively selling on eBay I would always enclose in the shipment to the buer a printed page of popular ebay and general web emoticons. I always wondered who thought these goodies up. 🙂
They really help to add tone and inflection on the written word.
Deb