17th July: World Emoji Day

EMOJIS have well and truly taken over the world with the handy little icons going beyond the realms of texting to expand into social media, movies and now it’s own official day.

World Emoji Day is an unofficial holiday that is celebrated annually in the summer to celebrate the emoji, a small digital icon used to represent an idea/and or emotion through electronic means.The first ever emoji was created by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999 as part of a team working on a mobile Internet platform in Japan where he distributed the first 175 pixel emoji’s.

It was founded in 2014 by Emojipedia’s Jeremy Burge, a year after the word was officially added to the Oxford Dictionary. He chose July 17th because this is the date displayed in the Calendar Emoji on the Apple keyboard.