You can track Santa today as he makes his way around the world with NORAD’s Santa Tracker. As of the time of this story being published, about 12:30pm, Santa was being tracked over the country of Zambia, located in central Africa.
NORAD is short for “North American Aerospace Defense Command” which is famous for its ability to track nearly anything flying around the globe. They got into the Santa Claus tracking business by accident back in 1955.
According to Wikipedia, Sears ran an ad offering a phone number for children to call Santa. The phone number printed was incorrect sending children’s calls to NORAD (called CONAD at the time) instead of to Santa. Instead of telling the callers, “wrong number,” it was decided NORAD staff would provide Santa’s “current location” and, thus, a tradition was born.
Now, more than 1,400 volunteers are expected to join NORAD on Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs to help track Santa’s journey this year. NORAD’s Santa Tracker logged over 10 million visitors to its website on Christmas Eve last year.
