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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The Weirdest Things About America


Someone on AskReddit asked for non-Americans to share the weirdest things about America that Americans don't even realize are weird. It's amazing how weird your country's normalized behavior can seem to the rest of the world. 

1.

Text - bodhan40 • 2d How your medical ads show an old guy living life well because of X-drug. He has the best time, the wife is having the best time and it's all because of the drug making things better. The end of the ad is full of warnings about how this happy drug can potentially kill you and your family, nuke your dog and make cats impotent. Recap the cliff-hanger episode of life in Alaska before another ad break. Unwatchable TV

2.

Text - linerys • 2d Car dealerships have huge flags. I don't get why you'd have a flag the size of ten RVs. So many roads don't have street lights. Not weird, but portion sizes are also huge. I struggled with finishing my food sometimes.

3.

Text - Daverotti • 2d I went to seaworld with my mum when I was in my mid teens. Halfway through the show, the performer (Not the whale) asked everybody in the military to stand up and the whole crowd gave them a round of applause. They sat back down and the show continued as if nothing had happened. Couldn't imagine anything similar happening back in Blighty. Edit: this was at Seaworld, Orlando not San Diego. Roughly 2003/4

4.

Text - Sp1Nnx • 2d 3 2 Awards When you have ads for drugs and half of the ad is telling you how the drug will kill you while also showing puppies. It's weird.

5.

Text - TheFireKing42 • 2d Not me, but my cousins who had lived in Kuwait and Australia for many years came to visit my family back in texas and laughed at how we said У'all.

6.

Text - BlackNOrange89 • 2d My Brazilian wife says she was amazed that we actually respect pedestrians here.

7.

Text - jursla • 2d Not seeing toilet brushes in hotels. I know, I know, room service and stuff, but is my family expected to look at my skid marks meanwhile?

8.

Text - drailCA • 2d I'm not sure if they find it weird or not but as a Canadian who has been to a few states: Gambling at gas stations in Montana. So damn weird.

9.

Text - victimsoftheemuwars • 2d When we were flying between cities, I found it weird to look out of the side of the plane and see towns midflight. In Australia, once you leave the city's airspace the landscape is completely barren until you arrive at your destination.

10.

Text - staypuftmichelinman • 2d 36 Awards Every man chips in during their pee time to chip away at the skid mark. Edit: 00 piece of silver. Oo piece of silver. Oo piece of silver. Edit: 00 piece of silver. Edit: 00 piece of silver. Edit: o0 piece of... GOLD?! IM ALLERGIC TO GOLD!

11.

Text - betterthansteve • 2d Everything in America is huge. I don't just mean the people or portion sizes, because we all know about that- but the roads, the buildings, the ceilings, the space between everything... America is gigantic. It just feels larger than it does here. I'm Australian but I've been to Asia and size-wise it's similar to Australia, and I've seen Europeans say the same about America. Everything is bigger.

12.

Text - alicebaguette • 2d Clearly the fact that there are people to put your groceries in a bag for you, l've never been so stressed and uncomfortable that while I was watching this young girl taking care of my groceries

13.

Text - PruRay2 • 2d Someone from my country who lives in USA told me that without a car you are crippled in America.

14.

Text - mr_cristy • 2d Canadian here, I was blown away by how weirdly social people are with strangers. Like some random guy l've never seen before just starts telling me his life story on the street. He is super normal, and doesn't seem crazy, just wants to talk to me for some reason. But then also, the dude at Wendy's is loudly threatening some 16 year old cashier in front of like 45 people. I got the impression the Wendy's guy was uncool, but the other guy seemed normal, and where I live I gen

15.

Text - hoocoo • 2d 3 2 Awards The amount of commercial breaks in a tv show.

16.

Text - rustyplayer1515• 2d Canadian here, canadas fast food restaurants have signs that fairly normal height, just enough to get the point across while not being obnoxious, cross over to the usa and within 5 seconds of leaving customs you can see fast food signs hundreds of feet in the air on giant poles. 2 - 3 times taller than here in Canada, why!? also finding peanut butter and jelly swirled into the same jar was shocking.

17.

Text - graycat3700 • 2d That poison ivy not only exists, but it's so ubiquitous.

18.

Text - dinosaur-pudge • 2d Americans are super friendly to the point that I (Australian) thought it was sarcasm or fake.

19.

Text - SingleBarrel • 2d 1 Award That there are a lot of squirrels.

20.

Text - Cripnite • 2d 3 3 Awards Child size drink. It's roughly the size of an average child if he were liquified. 18.3k

21.

Text - theBurgundyBoi • 2d 1 Award I live in the south and one time I was hanging out with a friend smoking by a lake in late spring / early summer. He was Egyptian and had just moved here over the winter. All of a sudden he freaked out saying he was seeing weird lights in the trees. I thought he was too high or something before I realized he meant the lightning bugs. He'd never seen them and didn't know what they were, so I started catching them and he was mind blown that they were just a norma

22.

Text - Inaka_ • 2d On behalf of my wife "what's up with the gaps in the toilet stall doors and no bidet?"

23.

Text - AnLe21 • 2d Free refills. Went to a restaurant with my dad (both German) and all of a sudden the waiter took away my drink with another perfectly good sipp in it and I must have looked pretty shocked. It was only then when my dad explained to me that you guys have free refills.

24.

Text - Endless_intermission • 2d Your toilets are full of water! In Australia the water is much lower. No wonder you complain about splashes on your bum.

25.

Text - Wished-this-was-easy • 2d In Germany "How are you?" is an actual question and you generally only ask it, if you know the other person. It was super hard to explain to my mum that the answer is always "fine, thank you" and that cashiers don't really care about how you actually feel, when we visited the US in 08.

26.

Text - Mycelium83 • 2d Lemondade made with real lemons and its like super sour but some how sugary sweet at the same time. In Australia lemonade is the same as sprite. So when I was there my mum and I ordered Jack Daniels and Lemonade and they made it with the real lemondade and it was awful. It was also weird because they sold pre mixed bottles of Jacks and lemonade with the real lemonade but in Australia you buy the same ones with sprite lemonade. Free refills was the other big one. Everywhere

27.

Text - dodopancake • 2d The bottom of the toilet cubile door is higher than a limbo bar. I want to shit in peace.

28.

Text - tinkrman • 2d 3 Awards Now that Thanksgiving and Christmas is over: The weirdest thing is that Americans will ask what you are doing for thanksgiving. Are you going to your family etc... When you say no. They invite you to their home. (I was a student, My family was thousands of miles away, and I'm happy that the local Cracker Barrel is open and looking forward to a meal there) My Professor did that. Invited me to his home. I had a good time, but it was strange. I'm meeting his uncles and

29.

Text - suomihobit • 2d American that just traveled overseas. I went to a great bookstore in Edinburgh and the cashier asked if I wanted to sign up for a rewards membership. This led to a conversation about how their CEO or something just took over Barnes and Noble in the States. I stated the closest B&N to me is an hour away, and the other cashier jumped in, saying how easy it is to forget how far apart things are in the States. He was just kind of baffled and said it often blows his mind. I mov

30.

Text - Xiaxs • 2d Hawaiian here, but I never noticed that we didn't have billboards until I moved out of Hawaii. Turns out they're illegal. So that's weird. It's awesome, cause I get unobstructed views, but still weird.

31.

Text - laywandsigh • 2d 3 2 Awards Everything's so big. From the super center Walmart store to food portions, the parking lot, pick up trucks, house, cup of coffee, airport, even the people.

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Tumblr Thread About Horrifying Monster Mold


So, the Elephant's Foot mold sounds like some sort of mythological Medusa-level monster. Sounds to me like a big heap of forbidden pudding. Seriously, no thank you. Here's to hoping we don't find ourselves one day in the future, being enslaved by black mold overlords. 

1.

Text - unexplained-events The photo above is the closest humanity has ever come to creating Medusa. If you were to look at this, you would die instantly.

2.

Text - The image is of a reactor core lava formation in the basement of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It's called the Elephant's Foot and weighs hundreds of tons, but is only a couple meters across. Oh, and regarding the Medusa thing, this picture was taken through a mirror around the corner of the hallway. Because the wheeled camera they sent up to take pictures of it was destroyed by the radiation. The Elephant's Foot is almost as if it is a living creature.

3.

Text - madmaudlingoes Friendly reminder that this blob of core material was so hot and dense, it melted/ burned through three floors of the building before coming to rest in the lowest basement. And there's now a unique species of black mold that feeds off the gamma radiation it produces. zubenpics Is no one else seriously freaked out by that mold? No? Just me, then?

4.

Text - clarabosswald wiki article about the mold grubwizard LOVE that mold! bowelflies okay but The Elephant's Foot is a large mass of black LFCM with many layers, externally resembling tree bark and glass. The mass is quite dense, unyielding to a drill but able to be damaged by a Kalashnikov rifle. By June wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwhy was someone shooting it with a kalashnikov

5.

Text - unexplained-events I can sleep again knowing that The Elephant's foot is weak to Kalashnikovs sindri42 I love that mold because humans made a mess we have no idea how to clean up and barely five years later we discover an entirely new kind of fungus that's just... eating it. Radiation levels are going down much faster than any of our models could predict, this stuff hasn't been found anyplace else in the world...

6.

Text - sanctusapparatus 6/6 Elephant's Foot: *releases horrifying levels of radiation fatal to most life* Heretofore unknown species of mold: delicious Finally, some good fucking food Source: unexplained-events

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