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How NORAD's ''Santa Tracker'' Began with Typo - 3 Minute 'StoryCorps' Podcast
Everyone who listens to National Public Radio in the US loves their Story Corps series, where people go into a sound booth and share a short, true, meaningful story.
This 3 minute podcast and article is about the origin's of the US Continental Air Defense Command's (aka NORAD's) radar "Santa Tracker". In 1955, at the height of the Cold War, there was a typo in an ad for the Sears store Santa hotline which caused little children to call a top-secret military hotline asking where Santa's sleigh was.
Only 2 military offices in the US had the phone number to that hotline! Colonel Harry Shoup answered the phone, expecting it was a Soviet missile attack, but when he realized the child on the phone though he was speaking to Santa at the North Pole he saved the day for little kids everywhere by playing along.
Colonel Shoup's 3 adult children tell the story, and it's well worth listening to:
Today's high tech NORAD Santa Tracker: http://www.noradsanta.org/
I remember being 5 or 6 yrs old, glued to the tv, waiting for the New to show radar tracking Santa approaching California. I took it as absolute scientific proof of Santa being real despite what some bratty older kids had told me, and I couldn't get to be fast enough!
God bless Colonel Shoup for his kind heart.
Ho ho ho!
Archaic
This 3 minute podcast and article is about the origin's of the US Continental Air Defense Command's (aka NORAD's) radar "Santa Tracker". In 1955, at the height of the Cold War, there was a typo in an ad for the Sears store Santa hotline which caused little children to call a top-secret military hotline asking where Santa's sleigh was.
Only 2 military offices in the US had the phone number to that hotline! Colonel Harry Shoup answered the phone, expecting it was a Soviet missile attack, but when he realized the child on the phone though he was speaking to Santa at the North Pole he saved the day for little kids everywhere by playing along.
Colonel Shoup's 3 adult children tell the story, and it's well worth listening to:
Today's high tech NORAD Santa Tracker: http://www.noradsanta.org/
I remember being 5 or 6 yrs old, glued to the tv, waiting for the New to show radar tracking Santa approaching California. I took it as absolute scientific proof of Santa being real despite what some bratty older kids had told me, and I couldn't get to be fast enough!
God bless Colonel Shoup for his kind heart.
Ho ho ho!
Archaic
Attached Files