NORAD’s amazing 60-year Santa tracking history

Pretty remarkable stuff here. The  National Archive blog takes a look at the background of the nation’s premier defense unit’s tracking of Santa as he travels around the globe delivering his Christmas goodies.

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 Some of the facts I thought were pretty cool:

• This Christmas Eve will be the 60^th year the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) will have tracked Santa Claus’s journey.
• Colonel Harry Shoup began the tradition in 1955, after receiving a phone call from a child expecting to reach Santa Claus. The misdirected call was the result of the child reversing two numbers of a Santa Line phone number printed in a Sears advertisement, according to the National Archives.
• This year, 1,250 volunteers will staff the NORAD phone lines answering questions about the trip. The volunteers are a mix of Canadian and American military personnel and Department of Defense civilians.
• The Santa Tracker hotline can be reached at 1(877)446-6723 starting at 3AM MST on December 24th and continuing through 3AM MST on December 25th.
• Official NORAD Tracks Santa apps are available in the Windows, Apple and Google Play stores. Tracking opportunities are also offered on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+. Santa followers just need to type “@noradsanta” into each search engine to get started.

Reuters