The boy was hopeless, the schoolmaster decided. Restless, inattentive and seemingly incapable of learning anything. “You’re addled,” he curtly informed the unpromising seven-year-old, and sent him home in tears.

But the boy’s mother was a tigress. No sooner had he sobbed out the schoolmaster’s cruel verdict, when she whipped off her apron, tugged on her bonnet and marched her son back to school to confront his tormentor. This boy is destined for greatness, she stormed at the cowed pedant. One day he would be famous and respected, while the schoolmaster would be remembered only as the dolt who couldn’t recognize a budding genius when he saw one. With that, the mother, who had been a schoolteacher herself, took charge of her son’s education and tutored him at home.

Most mothers have made equally extravagant predictions about their offspring at one time or other. But in this case, the mother’s fondest hopes were to be surpassed. Because the boy’s name was Thomas Alva Edison, and he never forgot the enormous debt he owed his mother. “My mother was the making of me,” he declared in his later years. “She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint."

Remember, this Sunday is Mother's Day