Do you know how old is the birthday song?

Well, curiousity got to me and I decided to find out. Today is my toddler's birthday and he sang the birthday song that goes on and on and one. I think most kids by the age of two or three years old would hum along whenever we sing the 'happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, etc etc'.

So, I did a little bit of searches on the internet to find out who compose the song and its origin. Well, many of the sites said that the song is written in 1859. That's a mighty long time ago. I bet those people are all dead and long gone. LOL.

I copied this little bit of trivia from HappyBirthday.com:

Happy Birthday Song Factoids

• The melody for the famous song was first penned by two sisters, Mildred and Patty Hill

• The song was originally called Good Morning to All and was used to greet schoolchildren in the morning.

• Another Hill sister (Jessica) published and copyrighted the song in 1935.

• 'Happy Birthday' became the first song to be performed in outer space when it was performed by the astronauts on Apollo IX in 1969.

• Time Warner reportedly paid $25 million for the rights to the song in 1988.

• The copyright is currently owned by TimeWarner and licensed and enforced by ASCAP

• In its long history, only two lawsuits have been brought for illegal singing of the song.

• Annual royalties of the song are estimated at around $2 million.

• The copyright will not expire until at least 2030

• There is much debate and controversy about the validity of this copyright for such a simple and old song.

• This copyright is the main reason you never hear waiters singing the song to patrons in restaurants. They usually sing some alternate, corporate-approved birthday song.

Anyway, we always sing the version from Madagascar movie.