In sending me the URL, you sent a "clickable link": if I click on the URL, the little guy drinking a Guinness (and another, and another ... I don't know where he puts them all!) pops up.
If you had wished to include the image in your message, with no clicks required on the part of the recipient, you would have preceded the URL with <#img src=", and placed at the end ">, but without the # sign -- I put it in to keep a link from being created.
So what you'd send would look like this:
<#img src="http://bimmerfest.org/forums/images/smilies/pint2.gif">
...but without the #.
If I type the identical line, but leave out the #, it will come out looking like this:
