Trumpets, violins, pianos, flutes and many more are all regarded as musical instruments, and on this day in 1987, a more unexpected addition was made to the list - a revolving plastic musical birthday cake stand.
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The brightly coloured stands, which when wound up played "Happy Birthday to You" as they rotated, had to undergo an extensive examination by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
This came about after a dispute between Customs and Australian Greetings, which had imported the stands from overseas, over how to classify the stands for tariff purposes.
Customs believed they were not musical instruments but "something more", because they also functioned as cake stands, but Australian Greetings claimed they were "musical instruments".
The tribunal said the crucial feature of the stands was not that they were birthday cake stands, but that they also played music at birthday celebrations.
After meticulous examinations of multiple definitions of "instrument" and "musical instrument", as well as the examination of the birthday cake stands themselves, the tribunal concluded the stands were indeed musical instruments, "albeit of an extremely limited musical capacity".
