By Alice Vincent writing for The Telegraph
The Happy Birthday song has finally been ruled as belonging to the public domain, but did you know of its tangled history?
On June 27, 1859, teacher Mildred Hill was born. You may not know her name but you will almost certainly have sung the song she helped write. Hill was the co-composer of Happy Birthday To You, originally called Good Morning To All, which is the song millions of people sing around a candlelit cake. It was first published in a songbook 90 years ago, on March 4. Although by 1924 the recognisable melody had been sung in American primary schools for nearly three decades, the publication was to trigger almost a century of legal wranglings which would result in Happy Birthday To You being one of the most lucrative songs of all time.
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