The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) along with Verizon Business will provide toll-free calling on Christmas Eve to a Santa Claus-tracking hotline so children can monitor the jolly old elf's journey around the world. Those in the United States and Canada can call 1-877-HI-NORAD from 4 a.m. Mountain time on Dec. 24 through 3 a.m. Mountain time on Dec. 25 to find out Santa's exact location. More than 1,000 volunteers, military personnel, their families and friends, and NORAD Tracks Santa corporate sponsor team members will man the phone lines all night long, according to a Verizon press release.
The Santa stalking program began with an errant telephone call from a child in 1955 after a newspaper ran a department store advertisement featuring a special Santa "hotline" phone number. Instead of ringing a phone at the store, the phone number was the operations hotline to the Continental Air Defense Command (NORAD's predecessor). In 2007, more than 94,000 calls were answered at the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center at Peterson Air Force Base, in Colorado Springs, Colo. Children and their parents can also track Santa -- in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese -- through a special NORAD Web site.
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