Smile, It's Your Birthday!

A professor at Carnegie Mellon University claims to have been the first person to use the :-) emoticon 25 years ago today.  You can thank Scott E. Fahlman for giving us this handy little symbol that can turn nearly any bold statement into a passive-aggressive jab.  Or make a very professional e-mail message appear to be written by a 13-year-old girl.

"I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)," wrote Fahlman, in a message to an electronic message board back in 1982.

I don't think I had even touched a computer yet in 1982, let alone used one for communicating online, so I'm going to take Fahlman's word for it.  I'm just surprised that it was a highly educated adult male behind the smiley, and that people using the Internet in 1982 actually had funny things to say. :)