I met the guy who invented :-)

Talk about an accomplishment that will be remembered forever. Here at CMU's Language Technologies Institute, I met Prof. Scott Fahlman, who in addition to doing some totally awesome research in the field of Artificial Intelligence, also basically invented :-) and :-( twenty seven years ago. He likes to play it down, but the fact is, he's added new letters to the alphabet of every language in the world. You can read his own, gripping account of how he came up with the smileys here.