Posted on September 19th, 2007 at 10:47 am under Pointless Ramblings
Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal “smiley face” in a computer message.
Read the rest at CNN: 
turns 25
Sept. 19th is quite an auspicious date… in addition to the smiley’s birthday, it is of course also International Talk Like a Pirate Day!
[...] When I posted about the Smiley’s 25th birthday I did so in good faith. But apparently the Smiley has lied about its age and is in fact much older. At least, according to this article at Snopes.com. [...]