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NORAD's Santa Tracker Began With A Typo And A Good Sport
http://www.npr.org/2014/12/19/371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began-with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2045This Christmas Eve people all over the world will log on to the official Santa Tracker to follow his progress through U.S. military radar. This all started in 1955, with a misprint in a Colorado Springs newspaper and a call to Col. Harry Shoup's secret hotline at the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD.
Terri remembers her dad had two phones on his desk, including a red one. "Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number," she says.
"This was the '50s, this was the Cold War, and he would have been the first one to know if there was an attack on the United States," Rick says.
The red phone rang one day in December 1955, and Shoup answered it, Pam says. "And then there was a small voice that just asked, 'Is this Santa Claus?' "
"And Dad realized that it wasn't a joke," her sister says. "So he talked to him, ho-ho-ho'd and asked if he had been a good boy and, 'May I talk to your mother?' And the mother got on and said, 'You haven't seen the paper yet? There's a phone number to call Santa. It's in the Sears ad.' Dad looked it up, and there it was, his red phone number. And they had children calling one after another, so he put a couple of airmen on the phones to act like Santa Claus."
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NORAD's Santa Tracker Began With A Typo And A Good Sport (Original Post)
underpants
Dec 2014
OP
marym625
(17,997 posts)1. What a cool story
Thanks!
PSPS
(13,593 posts)2. Another description of this fascinating history
George Kupczak, archivist of Bell System history, describes this in his introduction to the Bell System's film, "Seconds for Survival."
http://techchannel.att.com/play-video.cfm/2012/9/13/AT&T-Archives-Seconds-for-Survival-Bonus-Edition
MarianJack
(10,237 posts)3. What a nice story!
Thank you for sharing!
PEACE!