I was searching for a stirring smily (one that stirs, not an amazing exciting and thrilling one (although that would be cool too)) when I found this extrordinary claim 'I invented the smiley!' (I added the exclaimation mark - makes it kinda moniacle)
It was linked to an ancient thread (in computer terms anyway - 1982) where pple couldn't tell what was a joke and what wasn't. It's quite funny to read...
Here's the claim:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm
And here's the thread (there's a link of the claim page also):
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/Orig-Smiley.htm