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Happy, sad, silly, you probably use emoji every day messaging your mates - but did you know they are celebrated each year?

July 17 is Emoji day - chosen because that is the date shown on most calendar emoji.

The first emoji were invented by Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita in 1999, and have since become so popular that around 10 billion are sent every day!

This year is the eleventh Emoji Day - find out more about the symbols, including the all-time most popular emojis, below.

What is the most used emoji?

Each emoji has to be approved by Unicode Consortium - a group who decide which new emoji characters should be introduced.

With 3,521 to chose from it can sometimes be hard to know which one to use, but here are the top three used most often, according to emoji experts, Emojipedia.

Tears of joy

This Emoji is the most popular and is called tears of joy, but can also be used to show laughing and crying at the same time.

Red heart

At number two its the classic red heart. It shows you love someone or something, what a nice one to send! According to Emojipedia it's the most popular of all time - the "most beloved of all emojis, old or new."

Smiley heart eyes

Rounding out the top three is the heart-eyes emoji. Usually used to show you like what you are seeing. Could it be the top emoji if people didn't sometimes use the cat variant?

What's your favourite emoji? Let us know in the comments.

Which emoji are you? Take our personality quiz

Have you ever wondered which emoji you are? Well good news, we have the answer to this important issue, just a couple of questions away.

Wait no more, take our emoji quiz to find out!