Politico has a lovely story on the history and present of the NORAD Santa Tracker, which started because a 1955 Sears department store ad had “a digit wrong — and was instead the direct line into the secret military nerve center in Colorado Springs, Colo., where the Pentagon was on the lookout to prevent nuclear war.”
Mike Rowe did a nice story on this in his most recent podcast episode, That’s How I Heard It.
Here is a link to the podcast (The Way I Heard It not That’s The Way I Heard It as I wrote in my previous comment), https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-way-i-heard-it-with-mike-rowe/id1087110764?mt=2&i=1000397758777
Merry Christmas to everyone!
Thank you!
Stuff You Missed in History also had a really nice podcast about the creation of NORAD’s Santa Tracker. It’s a longer story with more details than Mike Rowe’s podcast, just under 40 min. Here’s the link: https://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/norad-tracking-santa.htm
The NORAD Santa Tracker is near & dear to my heart – as a child of a career Air Force officer, we used to listen to NORAD report the sightings on the radio (gasp, radio?) when I was growing up. It always made Christmas so special.
Here’s a link to Mike Rowe’s website (powered by WordPress) and a multitude of subscription links, including RSS for those of us who don’t play in the Apple pool…
http://mikerowe.com/podcast/
I did a short post on this too! It’s an interesting story, and there are actually a few different versions of the story.
http://www.worldofindie.co.uk/?p=313
I didn’t realize this! The kids love calling Santa’s elves at NORAD every year to see where Santa is on Christmas eve. It is the cutest.