They say you learn something new every day. Well, today I indeed
did. About a year ago I learned that more people are born on my birth date than
any other day. Why’s that? Other than being a Virgo is really cool, the answer
is probably more so that it is about 9 months from New Years. What does this
have to do with what I learned today? America’s most popular birth date is also
the birthday of the emoticon. That’s right, September 19th was the first time a
colon, hyphen, and closing parentheses were put together to form an expression
of an emotion. The three-character sequence to express a smiling face via plaintext
was proposed by Scott Fahlman on a Carnegie Mellon University message board in
1982.
He wrote:
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
:-(
The complete thread surrounding the innovation of :-), now known commonly as
the “smiley”, can be
read here.
Scott is a Research Professor of Computer Science at CMU, and it is only
fitting that his
personal webpage shows him
smiling much like a portrait version of his text creation.
On his site he has written an article reflecting on the birth
of his infamous sideways smiley face and the evolution it has taken. Check it
out here.
An interesting read about emoticon usage in our present
society can be read here.
And as always a plethora of information can be found on Wikipedia in this
article.
On behalf of all Virgos I wish the smiley a very happy upcoming 25th
birthday. 
