S02 Bonus Episode The Twelve Nuggets of Christmas, Nugget 5, Tracking Santa During the Cold War - and Today

The satellite Santa Tracker we enjoy now was made possible as the result of a misprint in a newspaper in 1955. The once dominating American retailor Sears decided to publish a phone number, in a Christmas ad, for little children to call Santa. The kids could call, with their parents listening in, to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas. A much more modern version of the whole writing a letter 2 months ahead so it could get to the North Pole in time. Well, as murphy law says, if anything can go wrong it will. And it did. Somehow the phone numbers published in the ad were not the number to call Santa. It was the wrong number. Instead of Santa, the kids had a chance to talk to the North American Aerospace Defense Command or NORAD.