aug 7, 1862 - Abraham Lincoln includes an emoticon in his speech?

Description:

In 2004, a team of specialists at the digital archive company Proquest was assigned the task of creating student friendly versions of historical newspapers. In the process they found a copy of a speech written by Abraham Lincoln in the mid 19th century. They found a short section where he includes commentary about laughter and applause, copied here:

“… there is no precedent for your being here yourselves, (applause and laughter ;) and I offer, in justification of myself and you, that I have found nothing in the Constitution against.”

At first the team felt that he tried implementing a ;), although historians and experts have concluded that this appears to be a typo (Lee, 2009).

Added to timeline:

Date:

Images: