I don't know if everyone knows the history of the NORAD Santa. I find it very encouraging and gives me a warm fuzzy when I read it.Enjoy!! And as Tiny Tim observed,"Merry Christmas ,everyone!"
In 1956, a Colorado Springs-based Sears store ran an advertisement encouraging people to call Santa Claus on a special kind of telephone hotline. Due to a printing error, the phone number that was printed was the hotline was actually for Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD). Then-Colonel Harry Shoup received the first call on Christmas Eve of 1955, from a six-year old boy who began reciting his Christmas list. Shoup then didn't find the call funny, but after asking the mother of the second caller what was happening, then realizing the mistake that had occurred, he told his staff to give Santa's position to any child who called in. Three years on, the government of the United States and Canada combined their respective national domestic air defenses into the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), but the tradition continued.Now major media outlets as well as children call in to inquire on Santa's location. NORAD relies on volunteers to help make Santa tracking possible.Many employees at Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson Air Force Base spend part of their Christmas Eve with their families and friends at NORAD's Santa Tracking Operations Center, in order to answer phones and provide Santa updates to thousands of callers. In 1997, Canadian Major Jamie Robertson took over the program and expanded it to the Web, where corporation-donated services have given the tradition global
accessibility.In 2004, NORAD received more than 35,000 e-mails, 55,000 calls and 912 million hits on the Santa-tracking website from 181 countries. In 2005, more than 500 volunteers answered
questions.In 2006 half a million calls and over 12,500 e-mails were handled from 210 territories.The site now gets well over 1 billion hits.
[url]http://www.noradsanta.org/[/url]
I will also put up a table there and see if I can sell anything .......as I have plenty left over LMAO .
