Just as Santa is getting ready for his annual Christmas Eve worldwide tour tonight, the Internet is getting ready to track him.
And as they have been doing now since 1998, the North American Aerospace Defense Command will go live at 6 a.m. Wednesday and all Christmas Eve day and night at www.noradsanta.org
The site includes Google maps, streaming videos and animations and “santa cam” images that follow Santa as he sets off from the north Pole and heads across the globe, delivering toys and presents to good little boys and girls.
This has become a tradition for many, gathering the kids around the computer and checking the NORAD site throughout the day, helping build anticipation for the big arrival.
While the Web site has only been around a decade, the tradition is older than NORAD, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. In 1955, a youngster in Colorado Springs misdialed a printed telephone number in a newspaper advertisement about Santa and ended up reaching the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center in Colorado Springs. The commander who answered the phone, rather than disappoint the caller, told him what the youngster wanted to know: The whereabouts of Santa.
When that agency merged into NORAD in 1958, the tradition continued and has grown up to a pretty sophisticated Web site.
Category: News
