Sunday, January 10, 2021

Tumblr Thread: The Origin Story Of NORAD's Santa Tracker


Sometimes an innocent little fail like a typo can go on to inspire an epic, time-honored tradition like rabidly checking the NORAD Santa Tracker. This Tumblr thread breaks down how a small typo in a Sears ad resulted in the North American Aerospace Defense Command having a special phone. So many kids' childhoods have been all the better for it. Gotta keep that Christmas spirit alive while you can. Check out some more random gold from Tumblr with this post about the time that an Ultima Online gamer nuked their fellow players right out of orbit. 

1.

Text - voroxpete But none of these stories even come close to the best one of them all; a wrong number is how the NORAD Santa Tracker got started. Seriously, this is legit. In December 1955, Sears decided to run a Santa hotline. Here's the ad they posted.

2.

Carnivore - SEARS HEY, KIDDIES! OC AND Co ON MY ME24 RY IMAS CALL ME DIRECT TELEPHONE JUST DIAL ME 2-6681 de k Sere d Care Call me on my private phone and I will telk to you personally any time day or night, or come in and visit me at Sears Toyland er SANTA CLAUS

3.

Text - Only problem is, they misprinted the number. And the number they printed? It went straight through to fucking NORAD. This was in the middle of the Cold War, when early warning radar was the only thing keeping nuclear annihilation at bay. NORAD was the front line. And it wasn't just any number at NORAD. Oh no no no.

4.

Text - 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.

5.

Text - 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, ʻIs this Santa Claus?': His children remember Shoup as straight-laced and disciplined, and he was annoyed and upset by the call and thought it was a joke – but then, Terri says, the little voice started crying.

6.

Text - "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."

7.

Text - "It got to be a big joke at the command center. You know, 'The old man's really flipped his lid this time. We're answering Santa calls,' " Terri says. And then, it got better. "The airmen had this big glass board with the United States on it and Canada, and when airplanes would come in they would track them," Pam says.

8.

Text - "And Christmas Eve of 1955, when Dad walked in, there was a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer coming over the North Pole," Rick says.

9.

Text - "Dad said, "What is that?' They say, 'Colonel, we're sorry. We were just making a joke. Do you want us to take that down?' Dad looked at it for a while, and next thing you know, Dad had called the radio station and had said, “This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh. Well, the radio stations would call him like every hour and say, 'Where's Santa now?' " Terri says. For real.

10.

Text - "And later in life he got letters from all over the world, people saying, Thank you, Colonel,' for having, you know, this sense of humor. And in his 90s, he would carry those letters around with him in a briefcase that had a lock on it like it was top-secret information," she says. "You know, he was an important guy, but this is the thing he's known for."

11.

Text - “Yeah," Rick [his son] says, "it's probably the thing he was proudest of, too." So yeah. I think that might be the best wrong number of all time. Source: http://www.npr.org/2014/12/19 /371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began -with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport amy-vic OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS.

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