NORAD Tracks Santa
Having only just got round to reading Schneier’s latest CrytoGram (thanks to BT(tm)), which is where I get practically all my news, I noticed that the US are shutting down Cheyenne Mountain (or close as), the very cool mountain base for NORAD as featured in WarGames, SG-1 and loads of other stuff. Sad though that is for fans of mountain lairs everywhere, I did hapen to visit the NORAD site and notice that they track santa over Christmas, due to a misprinted phone number back in the fities.
The NTS program began in 1955 when an errant phone call was made to NORAD’s predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. The call was from a local child who dialed a misprinted telephone number in a local newspaper advertisement. Although the wrong number, the commander who answered the phone that night gave the youngster the information he requested - the whereabouts of Santa Claus - thus the tradition of NORAD tracking Santa began.
They’ve got a podcast up about the whole tracking Santa thing as well, with previous episodes of the podcast series focusing on other NORADdy themes of interesting to the general public, such as disaster preparedness, and how best to prevent Matthew Broderick breaking into your house. Top stuff.