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. Hereâs the ad they posted.
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 wasnât just any number at NORAD. Oh no no no.
Terri remembers her dad had two phones on his desk, including a red one. âOnly a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number,â she says.
âThis was the â50s, this was the Cold War, and he would have been the first one to know if there was an attack on the United States,â Rick says.
The red phone rang one day in December 1955, and Shoup answered it, Pam says. âAnd then there was a small voice that just asked, âIs this Santa Claus?â â
His children remember Shoup as straight-laced and disciplined, and he was annoyed and upset by the call and thought it was a joke â but then, Terri says, the little voice started crying.
âAnd Dad realized that it wasnât a joke,â her sister says. âSo he talked to him, ho-ho-hoâd and asked if he had been a good boy and, âMay I talk to your mother?â And the mother got on and said, âYou havenât seen the paper yet? Thereâs a phone number to call Santa. Itâs in the Sears ad.â 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.â
âIt got to be a big joke at the command center. You know, âThe old manâs really flipped his lid this time. Weâre answering Santa calls,â â Terri says.
âThe airmen had this big glass board with the United States on it and Canada, and when airplanes would come in they would track them,â Pam says.
âAnd Christmas Eve of 1955, when Dad walked in, there was a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer coming over the North Pole,â Rick says.
âDad said, âWhat is that?â They say, âColonel, weâre sorry. We were just making a joke. Do you want us to take that down?â Dad looked at it for a while, and next thing you know, Dad had called the radio station and had said, âThis is the commander at the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh.â Well, the radio stations would call him like every hour and say, âWhereâs Santa now?â â Terri says.
âAnd later in life he got letters from all over the world, people saying, âThank you, Colonel,â 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,â she says. âYou know, he was an important guy, but this is the thing heâs known for.â
âYeah,â Rick [his son] says, âitâs probably the thing he was proudest of, too.â
So yeah. I think that might be the best wrong number of all time.
Source:Â http://www.npr.org/2014/12/19/371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began-with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport
