WORCESTER - Despite gray skies, there was plenty for Worcester to smile about on Friday. In addition to being World Smile Day, Worcester Red Sox mascot Smiley Ball made its inaugural stroll around ...

Harvey Ball, a commercial artist whose design of a "smiley face" became a pop icon for the 1970s, died Thursday in Worcester, Mass., after a short illness.

The ubiquitous yellow smiley face symbol was created in 1963. ... when the graphic designer Harvey Ball was approached by State Mutual Life Assurance Company to create a morale booster for employees.

Monahan's hand-drawn design has the smiley face wearing glasses that also spell out "100th." Smiley is in front of a banner reading "100th Birthday Celebration of Harvey Ball, July 10, 2021." ...

An original Harvey Ball smiley face (image: The World Smiley Foundation) In the 1994 Robert Zemeckis film, Forrest Gump stumbles into the history books as he runs across the country. At one point ...

In 1999, Ball created World Smile Day to encourage kindness and combat the over-commercialization of the smiley face. The day falls of the first Friday of October.

Did you know the inventor of the smiley face never copyrighted his work? Not only that, ... Neither Ball nor the insurance company trademarked the soon-to-be iconic design.