"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
12/24/2015 at 12:35 • Filed to: planelopnik, planelopnik history
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"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
12/24/2015 at 12:35 • Filed to: planelopnik, planelopnik history | 5
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For more than 50 years, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, better known as !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , has turned America’s most powerful radars skyward to track Santa Claus on his annual global toy—or lump of coal—delivery. What has become a holiday tradition for children and aviation geeks like myself did not begin because NORAD thought that Santa Claus posed a risk of nuclear armagedon at the height of the Cold War. It started because of a typo.
Left: The infamous Sears ad; Right: Colonel Harry Shoup
Back in 1955, a Sears Roebuck store in Colorado Springs placed an ad in the local newspaper that encouraged children to call and speak to Santa Claus, or just come by their local Sears store and speak to him in person. Unfortunately for Sears, and NORAD, the phone number published in the paper was off by one digit. The first child to dial the number, expecting to get Kris Kringle on the line, instead was connected US Air Force Colonel Harry Shoup on the Pentagon alert hotline at the Continental Air Defense Command, the predecessor to NORAD. At first, Col. Shoup was annoyed by the call, and thought that it was a prank. After all, the red hotline was only meant for top Pentagon brass in case of a nuclear crisis. But once he realized that the young caller was in earnest, Col. Shoup played along. His daughter recalled the incident:
And Dad realized that it wasn’t a joke....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.
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Soon, the airmen were playing along too, and they began plotting Santa’s position on their big map and provided updates to young callers anxious to know when Santa would arrive. And NORAD has been playing along ever since. Shoup died in 2009, but his legacy lives on, and now children can track Santa Claus through the Internet with the official !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , or with a smartphone app.
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You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much
> ttyymmnn
12/24/2015 at 12:45 |
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It is pretty cool how that started. Here I assumed it was some pencil pusher who figured NORAD could use some good publicity who dreamed it up.
Jayhawk Jake
> ttyymmnn
12/24/2015 at 13:05 |
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While I find anything involving Santa to be dumb and annoying, it's a fun backstory to a silly tradition.
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ttyymmnn
> Jayhawk Jake
12/24/2015 at 13:17 |
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sunnydaysam
> ttyymmnn
12/24/2015 at 13:54 |
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Great bit of Americana there. Thanks and Merry Christmas, ttyymmnn
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ttyymmnn
> sunnydaysam
12/24/2015 at 14:14 |
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You’re welcome, and Merry Christmas to you!
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Jayhawk Jake
> ttyymmnn
12/24/2015 at 16:39 |
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Christmas is very annoying to me. I don’t celebrate it. I’m happy for other people who do, but goddamn it gets shoved down every orifice for 2 months every year.
Santa I just don’t get. What does it even represent? Oh, those presents your family worked hard to get you? Nah, they aren’t from them they’re from a mystical fat man who breaks into your house in the middle of the night to give you gifts his slaves made.
I can sort of see it as a way to get people to give gifts anonymously, a pure good deed as you don’t expect appreciation, but I feel like it breeds a sense of entitlement. If I’m good a jolly fat man will reward me. I just don’t get it, and call me a grinch but it’s gotten old.