Happy Smile Day!

Today the electronic smile - the emoticon - turns 30 years old. In terms of popularity in the world, this is probably the first sign after the dollar. Or maybe emotional symbolism is already more important than monetary symbolism.

The colon, hyphen and closing bracket were added to the Internet dictionary in 1982 by Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott Fahlman. Since then, it is impossible to imagine correspondence on the Internet without a variety of variations on the theme of happy and upset faces. Some craftsmen manage to convey the most subtle shades of mood through a sequence of punctuation marks.

Others are so happy about some significant event that they put emoticons not only in electronic messages: graduate Sasha Medvedko in 2006, in honor of his long-awaited graduation from school, not far from the Ostankino Tower, depicted a smiley with an area of 360 sq.m. This giant happily delighted local residents for 6 years - the asphalt there was only recently laid.

Photo: Alexander Medvedko

Smiles are embodied not only on monitor screens, paper and asphalt: in honor of the anniversary, PublicPost made a selection of smiles in architecture.

Estonia, Tallinn