Today marks the 23rd birthday of the :-)
On September 19, 1982 at 11:44 a.m., Professor Scott Fahlman proposed the smiley to signal a joke, after a post on a Carnegie Mellon University bulletin board was not taken for the joke it was. A few years ago, Microsoft techs who had too much time on their hands got a hold of the old Carnegie Mellon backup tapes and a machine capable of reading them, and tracked down the moment the smiley was born. Click here to read the entire thread that gave birth to the smiley. Personally, I prefer some of the other options that were floated about as early emoticons. My personal favorite is {#} if only because I have a soft spot for the octothorpe (that would be the pound sign for those of you who spend too much time on automated phone systems). That mark has been repurposed and renamed so many times, it's hard not to feel a little sorry for it, particularly since people call it pretty much everything except its actual name.
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