Quiz of the Day
World Emoji Day π
Friday, 17 July 2026
From Japan's first 176 pixelated symbols to 3,000+ global icons β the emoji revolution
1. Why is July 17th World Emoji Day?
- The π calendar emoji shows July 17 on Apple devices
- It marks the first emoji being sent online
- It's the birthday of the emoji's inventor
- It's the date Unicode first approved emoji
Apple's calendar emoji (π ) has displayed July 17 since iOS 6 β it's the date Apple introduced iCal in 2002. World Emoji Day was founded in 2014 by Jeremy Burge, creator of Emojipedia, specifically because of this coincidence.
2. Who created the original emoji set in 1999?
- The Unicode Consortium
- A team at Apple Japan
- Shigetaka Kurita for NTT DoCoMo
- A Google engineer
Kurita designed the original 176 emoji for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile internet platform. Each was a 12x12 pixel image. His original design sheets are now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, recognised as a landmark of design history.
3. Which emoji has consistently ranked as the most used globally in recent years?
- β€οΈ
- π
- π
- π
The 'Face with Tears of Joy' emoji (π) is the world's most-used emoji by a wide margin. In 2015, it was named Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year β the first time a pictograph received that honour. Despite being associated with millennials, Gen Z briefly declared it 'uncool' before it reasserted its dominance.
4. How many emoji are officially approved by Unicode as of 2025?
- Around 1,800
- Around 5,000
- Around 3,700
- Around 1,200
Unicode releases new emoji annually after reviewing hundreds of proposals. The approval process is rigorous β proposals must demonstrate broad usability across cultures, frequent search volume, and that the concept isn't already covered. A famous rejected proposal was a stapler; a famous approved one was the pregnant man (2021).
5. The Unicode Consortium, which standardises emoji globally, is headquartered in which US city?
- New York
- San Francisco
- Seattle
- Mountain View
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit based in Mountain View, California. Membership includes tech giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, who must agree for any new emoji to be approved. This explains why politically sensitive emoji β flags of disputed territories, for example β are handled with extreme care.
6. What was the first emotion emoji to be standardised in Unicode?
- π
- π
- βΊοΈ
- π
The white smiling face (βΊοΈ) was among the earliest emoji encoded in Unicode, derived from the legacy character set Wingdings and Zapf Dingbats. Unlike the modern bright-yellow emoji face designs, it's a simple outlined symbol that predates the colourful emoji revolution by decades.
7. The 'tears of joy' and 'loudly crying face' emoji look similar but are used very differently. Research shows 'loudly crying' is often used ironically to express what?
- Anger
- Overwhelming happiness or humour
- Real sadness
- Sarcasm
Linguistic research has found that π ('loudly crying face') is frequently used to express something is so funny or good it's emotionally overwhelming β the opposite of its literal meaning. This semantic shift is an example of how emoji meanings evolve through collective usage rather than design intent.
8. Which country uses the most emoji per tweet on average, according to Twitter research?
- South Korea
- Japan
- France
- United States
France consistently ranks as one of the world's heaviest emoji users per message β particularly love-related emoji. Different cultures use emoji very differently: Japanese users favour more subtle and formal emoji; Americans use more food and activity emoji; Australians use significantly more alcohol-related emoji than global averages.
9. Emoticons β text-based emotional expressions like :-) β predate emoji. Who is credited with first using the smiley emoticon in a digital message?
- Ray Tomlinson
- Scott Fahlman
- Bill Gates
- Tim Berners-Lee
Computer scientist Scott Fahlman typed :-) and :-( in a 1982 Carnegie Mellon bulletin board message, suggesting they be used to distinguish jokes from serious posts. The original message was lost but recovered in 2002 through archived server backups. Fahlman has been somewhat ambivalent about the fame this earned him.
10. What does the π emoji officially represent according to Unicode, despite being widely interpreted as prayer?
- Two hands clasped in respect
- High five
- Thank you gesture
- Prayer hands
Unicode officially calls π 'person with folded hands' and notes it can represent prayer, please/thank you, or a high five. In Japanese culture, this gesture is primarily used to say 'please' or 'thank you,' not prayer. The ambiguity makes it one of the emoji most prone to cross-cultural misinterpretation.
11. In which year did Apple first add emoji keyboard support natively to iOS?
- 2013
- 2008
- 2010
- 2011
Although emoji were available on Japanese iPhones from 2008, Apple added emoji to its global keyboard in iOS 5 in 2011. This single moment is considered the turning point for emoji's worldwide explosion β overnight, hundreds of millions of non-Japanese iPhone users gained access to the full emoji set.
12. The π (eggplant) emoji is consistently among the most flagged by content moderation systems. Why?
- It triggers food allergy warnings
- It's used as sexual innuendo
- It's overused in spam
- It's associated with violence
Instagram banned the eggplant emoji from hashtag searches in 2019 due to its overwhelming use in sexually suggestive content. It's a classic case of emoji semantic drift β a perfectly innocent vegetable symbol repurposed through collective user creativity into something requiring content moderation across multiple platforms.
13. Emoji rendering can differ between devices. Why might the same emoji look very different on an iPhone versus an Android phone?
- They use different file formats
- Unicode only specifies the concept, not the visual design
- Legal restrictions prevent copying designs
- Android compresses emoji to save memory
Unicode describes what an emoji is β 'a pile of poo' β but each platform draws it themselves. This has led to famous miscommunications: an emoji looking like a genuine smile on one platform appears sarcastic or sinister on another. Research has found that these visual differences cause real communication misunderstandings.
14. Which tech company's emoji set is most widely used globally by volume, as it's the default on the world's most popular mobile operating system?
- Apple
- Samsung
- Huawei
Google's emoji are the default on Android, which powers around 72% of smartphones worldwide. This makes Google's visual interpretations the most commonly seen emoji on Earth, despite Apple's emoji often setting the cultural standard due to Apple's outsized influence in media and celebrity usage.
15. Courts in several countries have had to rule on emoji used as legal evidence. In a notable Israeli case, what did a court determine a string of emoji including π π€ conveyed?
- An acceptance of friendship
- A binding agreement to rent a property
- Threatening behaviour
- A declaration of love
In a 2023 Israeli court case, a landlord showed prospective tenants sent emoji including π π€ππ« in response to an offer. The court ruled this conveyed a commitment to rent, amounting to a binding verbal agreement, and awarded the landlord compensation when the tenants backed out. Emoji are increasingly being scrutinised as legal evidence worldwide.