Merry Christmas Everyone!!
This Day in Aviation History
December 24th, 1955
60th anniversary of NORAD Tracks Santa.
 
The program began on December 24, 1955, when a Sears department store placed an advertisement in a Colorado Springs newspaper which told children that they could telephone Santa Claus and included a number for them to call. However, the telephone number printed was misprinted and calls instead came through to Colorado Springs’ Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Center. Colonel Harry Shoup, who was on duty that night, told his staff to give all children who called in a “current location” for Santa Claus. A tradition began which continued when the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) replaced CONAD in 1958.
 
Today, NORAD relies on volunteers to make the program possible. Each volunteer handles about forty telephone calls per hour, and the team typically handles more than 12,000 e-mails and more than 70,000 telephone calls from more than two hundred countries and territories. Most of these contacts happen during the twenty-five hours from 2 a.m. on December 24 until 3 a.m. MST on December 25. Google Analytics has been in use since December 2007 to analyze traffic at the NORAD Tracks Santa website. As a result of this analysis information, the program can project and scale volunteer staffing, telephone equipment, and computer equipment needs for Christmas Eve. Volunteers include NORAD military and civilian personnel…..
 
Source:
Wikipedia, NORAD Tracks Santa: http://gstv.us/1S5xgRY
 
YouTube, NORAD Tracks Santa 60th Anniversary: http://gstv.us/1S5xs3O
By NORAD Tracks Santa
 
If you enjoy the “This Day in Aviation History” collection, you may enjoy some of these other collections from Gazing Skyward TV: http://gstv.us/GSTVcollections
 
Photo from: http://gstv.us/1S5xuZq
 
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