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NORAD Santa Tracker

December 24, 2013 by · Comments Off on NORAD Santa Tracker 

NORAD Santa Tracker, NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) started tracking him when a 1955 advert encouraged children to phone Santa – but gave the wrong number.

Once he realised what had happened, Colonel Harry Shoup – who came to be known as the “Santa Colonel” – quickly told his staff to answer the calls with an update on Father Christmas’s current position.

Nowadays, volunteers staff call centres on Christmas Eve and field around 70,000 phone calls each year from 200 countries.

NORAD online Santa tracker

Then deputy commander of NORAD Lt. Gen. Marcel Duval said in 2010: “It’s really ingrained in the NORAD psyche and culture.

“It’s a goodwill gesture from all of us, on our time off, to all the kids on the planet.”

Through the years the tracker has become more advanced, and it now has its own Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts.

This year sees a new website that not only counts down the days until Father Christmas will begin delivering presents but lets you visit the digital North Pole and play various games.

Every day, NORAD will release a new game on the site; currently you can play a memory game.

On Christmas day, the site will monitor Father Christmas and the reindeers’ whereabouts on a map and keep a running tally of the number of gifts delivered.

Bing has optimised the site for touchscreen devices and is using 3D technology with WebGL to provide a “more realistic-looking version of Santa’s Village and Santa’s trek across the world”.

NORAD Santa Tracker

December 5, 2011 by · Comments Off on NORAD Santa Tracker 

NORAD Santa Tracker, Anxious for Christmas or know some young ones who are? On Thursday, a special website launched just for the holiday season, bringing games and videos leading up to Christmas Eve.

On Dec. 24, the NORAD Santa Tracker starts tracking Santa’s journey, a special treat for believers young and old.

The tradition started in 1955 after an advertisement for Sears Roebuck & Co. misprinted a telephone number for a special “Santa hotline.” Instead of reaching Kris Kringle, the number put kids through to the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Commander-in-Chief’s operations, according to a description on the NORAD Tracks Santa Facebook page, which has more than 715,600 “likes.”

Colonel Harry Shoup, Director of Operations at the time, received the first ‘Santa’ call and had his staff check radar data for Santa. From then on, children who called in were given an update on his position.

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