Twenty six years ago today, Scott Fahlman posted the following electronic message to a computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman 🙂
From: Scott E Fahlman
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:
🙁

As any teacher who has received a paper from a student in the past 5 – 10 years will tell you, the world has never been the same since.
To honor the occasion, Wired has an article about the founder of the emoticon movement and a slide show as well.
Smile – it’s Friday!