Tracking Santa as he travels around the world on Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve, 1955. Colonel Harry Shoup, Director of Operations at the Continental Air Defense (CONAD), answers the hotline phone to hear a six year old boy reciting his wish list for Santa. Colonel Shoup was not particularly amused, but when another call came in he discovered the cause of the problem. The Colorado Springs Sears store had ran an advertisement for children to call Santa on a special hotline, then a printing error had caused the hotline for CONAD to be printed by mistake.

Colonel Shoup instructed his staff to begin providing any child that called with details on Santa's location at the time of the call and now, over 50 years later, NORAD still carries on the tradition of tracking Santa Claus for the children of the world.

NORAD came into existence when in 1958 the governments of the United States and Canada combined their national domestic air defenses, those forming the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) which replaced CONAD. Today NORAD uses special tracking systems to detect when Santa leaves the North Pole, then maintains hourly updates on Santa's location as Santa makes his journey around the world.

NORAD will be tracking Santa this year with the help of Google Earth, providing 3D tracking. Starting at 2:00 A.M. Mountain time on Christmas Eve Santa can be tracked live with NORAD Santa Cams taking photos of Santa and his reindeer on their journey.

Visit NORADSanta.org for all the details on NORAD's tracking of Santa in 2007.