Happy 30th birthday emoticon! :-)

To some, an email isn't complete without the inclusion of :-) or :-(. To others, the very idea of using "emoticons" – communicative graphics – makes the blood boil and represents all that has gone wrong with the English language.
Regardless of your view, as emoticons celebrate their 30th anniversary this month, it is accepted that they are here stay. Their birth can be traced to the precise minute: 11:44am on 19 September 1982. At that moment, Professor Scott Fahlman, of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, sent an email on an online electronic bulletin board that included the first use of the sideways smiley face: "I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways."
The aim was simple: to allow those who posted on the university's bulletin board to distinguish between those attempting to write humorous emails and those who weren't. Professor Fahlman had seen how simple jokes were often misunderstood and attempted to find a way around the problem, independent.co.uk reports.
Despite his claim to the sideways smiley face, some critics have suggested that the idea had been around before 1982. Professor Fahlman says various people have written to him over the years, claiming they had the idea before him. But he insists he has yet to see any evidence.
However, some people have pointed out that 150 years ago, in an edition of The New York Times in 1862, a transcript of a speech by Abraham Lincoln apparently contained a modern-day ;-). Nerds and conspiracy theorists are still debating whether or not it was a typo.