Who wrote ‘Happy Birthday to you’?

Happy Birthday is one of the most popular songs written in the English Language, all of us love the tune, and love to sing it.

But have we ever questioned its origin? Where has the song come from? Who wrote it? Well I will answer these questions but firstly let me jot down some surprising facts about the song ‘Happy Birthday to you’.

-It was composed around 1890s.

-The song is currently owned by an American music publishing company.

-Yes it is copyrighted.

-The patent for the song exchanged hands in late 1990s for around $5 Million.

I have to admit that the first time I came across these facts; so now let’s have a look at the origins of the song.

If we look at a song called ‘Good Morning to All’ below, you will notice a considerable similarity between this song and ‘Happy Birthday to You’.

"Good Morning to All"

Good morning to you,

Good morning to you,

Good morning, dear children,

Good morning to all.

‘Good Morning to All’ was written by two sisters, Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill in 1893. Patty being a kindergarten principal in Louisville, Kentucky, the sisters composed this song for young children to sing. It was included in a book called ‘Song Stories for the Kindergarten’ by Patty Hill.

Now the facts regarding who replaced the words with ‘Happy Birthday to You’ into the Hill sisters melody are a bit unclear. It is said that the children loved the song so much; they started singing it at birthday parties altering the lyrics to include the happy birthday theme. In 1924, Robert Coleman included the song ‘Good Morning to All’ with a second verse being ‘‘Happy Birthday to You’’ in a song book. It was also published in 1933 by Coleman in The American Hymnal.

In 1935 ‘Happy Birthday to You’ was first copyrighted by the Summy Company, the publisher of ‘Good Morning to all’, working with Jessica Hill, the third sibling of the Hill sisters.

The Summy Company was later purchased by an accountant named John F. Sengstack, who later renamed the company to Birch Tree Ltd.

Now in the resent past the rights to ‘Happy Birthday to You’  and the Birch Tree company were sold to the Time-Warner Corporation for around $25 million, valuing ‘Happy Birthday to You’ at around $5 million. Now it is said that royalty collected for ‘Happy Birthday to You’ in 2008 alone was almost $2 million, that’s $5000+ a day.

The royalties are shared between the Time-Warner Corporation and the successor of the original authors.

Now you will question who actually pays to perform ‘Happy Birthday to You’. Does it mean that you have to pay up every time this song is performed? No, royalties are due only for commercial use such as in movies, television shows, radio, as well as when the song is incorporated in musical greeting cards.

So some interesting points you will notice, movies or TV shows always end up not singing the Happy Birthday song , since a legal challenge would cost a great deal more than the $10,000 licensing fee, most filmmakers just pay Time-Warner or continue  without the song or have their characters sing things like, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow.’

But one interesting point, Batman Begins has the entire song performed, but again it is a Warner Bros movie. You will notice it as one of the non-included tracks in the movie Soundtrack.

So just be aware the next time you sing a song, there is always an interesting tale just don’t end up unhappy when you have to pay for it.

Always while researching a topic we come across some very pleasant surprises. Here is one I came across. It’s a video of classical variations of Happy Birthday conducted by Zubin Mehta. Now I am not sure if he paid Warner or not for performing the song, but frankly I really don’t care. The performance on the other hand is stunning. Please enjoy.

Why is the Marathon 42.19 KM ?

We know the modern Marathon is 42.19 kilometers or 26 miles and 385 yards, but what does this strange distance pertain to, why is the Marathon not a whole number of Kilometers or Miles. 

Let us start with the history of the marathon race itself.  Most of us know about the story of how the marathon race started or in fact got its name from, but to refresh one’s memory let’s go back to 490 BC when the Persians were defeated in the great Battle of Marathon, to send out this triumphant message Pheidippides, a Greek messenger ran at a stretch from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens. On arriving and delivering the message of victory he collapsed of exhaustion and died. We will never know the exact distance that Peidippides ran but if we take the approximate route today along the modern Highway between marathon and Athens, it’s around 42.3 Km.

Now taking a look at the distances of modern Marathons I did a comparison between the distances of Olympic Marathon races till the distance got constant.

Olympic marathon distances
Year	Distance (km)	Distance (miles)
1896	40	24.85
1900	40.26	25.02
1904	40	24.85
1906	41.86	26.01
1908	42.195	26.22
1912	40.2	24.98
1920	42.75	26.56
1924 onward	42.195	26.22

When you refer to the above table you will notice that only 1924 onwards are the Marathon race distances a constant 42.195 km. The standard distance of 42.195 was officially set International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) in May 1921 which is based on the 1908 Summer Olympics marathon distance held in London.

Now there is no documentation as to why the marathon distance from this particular Olympic was chosen, but speculation has it that the media had a very large role to play here.

The original distance of the Marathon event in 1908 was 25 miles which was changed to 26 miles on the request of Princess Mary so the race would begin at the Royal Nursery. The distance was further increased to ensure the race would finish in front of the King's seat at the Olympic stadium, bringing the length of the race to 26.22 Miles or 42.195 kms.

Now during the race Dorando Pietri, an Italian runner, who was leading the race, entered the stadium barely able to keep his footing, struggling to finish the race and collapsing a number of times before being helped by a few officials to cross the finish line. This story of a semiconscious man finishing the extended race spread across, the media even started reporting a rumour that Pietri had died in hospital after the race. Such events and articles helped lift up the Marathons image as the ultimate race during those times. 

Now as I mentioned earlier there is no documentation as to why this particular race distance was decided as the official distance but as always a good story always remains in the minds of people, and IAAF might have just decided to use that publicity to keep the race alive.

So here we have it a simple trivial question, but an amazing story about Peidippides and Dorando Pietri, and how their story shaped the distance of our Marathon runs.