On the first Friday in October every year, people celebrate World Smile Day.

The idea of World Smile Day was coined and initiated by Harvey Ball, a commercial artist from Worcester, Massachusetts. He is known to have created the yellow Smiley Face in 1963. The World’s first World Smile Day was held in the year 1999 and has been held annually since. After Harvey died in 2001, the “Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation” was created to honour his name and memory. The slogan of the Smile Foundation is “improving this world, one smile at a time.” The Foundation continues as the official sponsor of World Smile Day each year. A smiley, or happy face, is a stylized representation of a smiling human face. It is commonly represented as a yellow (many other colors are also used) circle or sphere with two black dots representing eyes and a black half circle representing the mouth. “Smiley” is also sometimes used as a generic term for any emoticon.

Links:
World Smile Day 2026

World Smile Day: What is it, and how did it begin?