July 17 is unofficially celebrated since 2014 as World Emoji Day. The day is deemed a “global celebration of emoji and is celebrated with emoji events and product releases.
Emoji, a Japanese expression, roughly means “picture word” and was developed in 1990 by Shigetaka Kurita. While working for NTT Docomo, a Japanese telecom company, Kurita design these picture words as a feature on their pagers to make them more appealing to teens.
A number of emojis are being developed every year, and emojipedia.org keeps track of all the emoji updates across all platforms. There are over 1800 emojis covering much more than just emotions.
