July 17th, 2025

July 17 is considered World Emoji Day, because this date is featured on Apple's iOS emoji for "calendar." Emojis have become an integral part of daily communication. With text messaging and email taking over personal communication, individuals have increasingly relied on emojis to convey emotions. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that a day has been set aside to celebrate them.

Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e (絵, "picture") + moji (文字, "character"). The first emoji was created in 1998 or 1999 in Japan by Shigetaka Kurita. Kurita was working on the first mobile internet platform called "i-mode." He was part of this project team who's goal was to give internet service on cell phones in Japan. Thanks to the adoption of emojis on Apple's operating system platform and other computer and phone providers, emojis have become so integrated into conversation, that people now use them to fill most of their messages or even to create whole stories just with emojis.