This month for the We Are The World Blogfest I am sharing a light-hearted little story I found from Smithsonian.org. We all use the little smiley face emoji with our blogs all the time. This article The Proliferation of Happiness shares a brief history of Positive Psychology and a bit about the man who invented the ‘smiley face.’
“It took only ten minutes for Harvey Ball to create the Smiley face. In 1963, the State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Worcester, Massachusetts, hired him to come up with a design that would help raise the morale of its employees.”
Harvey Ball was an artist and trained sign painter who was paid $45 for the design. The original Smiley face was not patented, but he did license one version with his World Smile Corporation in 1999. “The Corporation licenses Smileys and organizes World Smile Day World Smile Day raises money for the Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation, a non-profit charitable trust that supports children’s causes. World Smile Day is held on the first Friday of October each year and is a day dedicated to “good cheer and good works”. The catch phrase for the day is “Do an act of kindness – help one person smile”.-Wikipedia.
Authentic Worchester-made smiley face, Harvey Ball.
Harvey Ball and Harvey Ball Stamp
We Are The World Blogfest, #WATWB is scheduled for the last Friday of each month and is hosted by Belinda Witzenhausen, Sylvia McGrath, Sylvia Stein Shilpa Garg, Eric Lahti
Featured image ‘Beauty of love’ by Thai Jasmine on Flickr.
Notes Tied On The Sagebrush 
It’s good to know the story behind the smile. Thanks, Deborah. 🙂
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Positive guy, the inventor. 🙂
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Very interesting story Deborah thank you …
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Thank you, Susan. 🙂
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Very interesting! I had no idea! Thanks for sharing that 🙂
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You are welcome. 🙂
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Nice to know the origin of the “smiley”, especially since I drive people crazy with emoji’s lol. 😊😊 Thanks so much for sharing this and for being a part of #WATWB! WIshing you a wonderful weekend.
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Thank you, Belinda. It was fun finding out about the history of the Smiley face. 🙂
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