Happy Birthday To You
What’s a birthday without singing “Happy Birthday to You’’? “Happy Birthday to You” is a song traditionally sung to celebrate the anniversary of a person’s birth.
In fact, many experts believe that “Happy Birthday to You” is the best-known and most-frequently sung song in the world. It has been sung in 143 movies and translated into at least 18 languages.
Do you know that this song was actually composed by Mildred J Hill along with her younger sister, Patty Smith Hill on June 27,1859? Both, Patty Hill and her sister Mildred were kindergarten teachers in Louisville, Kentucky (USA). Patty Smith Hill first published the song in 1893 as ‘Good Morning to All’ in the book Song Stories for the Kindergarten as a classroom greeting song that a teacher could sing for students.
Nearly ten years after the publication of their first song book, the Hill sisters were invited to a neighbour’s birthday party. It was then that Patty changed the words of “Good Morning to All” to “Happy Birthday to You,” in an effort to make the occasion more festive. Indeed the song was the highlight of the party, and obviously caught on.
Did you know that ‘Happy Birthday to You’ is the first song sung in the outer space? On March 8, 1969, the crew of Apollo IX Mission to Moon sang it for Chris Kraft, Director of Flight Operations, Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC).
