The first emoji ever created was a heart, and it appeared in 1995! Shigetaka Kurita, a Japanese designer, made it for a mobile phone company called NTT DoCoMo to help users express emotions in text messages. At the time, texting was new, and messages were limited to 250 characters, so Kurita wanted to add a visual way to share feelings. The heart emoji was part of a set of 176 simple icons, including smiley faces, weather symbols, and food items, all designed in a 12×12 pixel grid.

That little heart paved the way for the emoji explosion we see today—there are now over 3,600 emojis in the Unicode Standard, used in billions of messages daily. Kurita’s idea was inspired by Japanese manga, where symbols often show emotions, and weather signs on TV. The word “emoji” comes from Japanese: “e” (picture) and “moji” (character). It wasn’t until 2010 that emojis went global, thanks to Apple adding them to iPhones. This tiny heart took a big bite out of how we communicate, making texts more fun and expressive.

Next time you send a heart emoji, think of its 1995 debut—it’s a pop culture nibble worth sharing. Share this with your friends and come back for more on Bitefact!