Adam, if you're thinking about the yellow face smiley pictured, yes, that's a lot older. This anniversary is for the typed emoticon smiley. The history of the internet emoticon is rather well documented.
All the master Tetris players I've seen use that "leave one column open on the side" tactic. I wonder it thats to keep the distraction of dissapearing rows down to a minimum, or is there some other reason?
Here's my favorite haka video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUkGXULz54c