The military s famous Santa Tracker began with a wrong number.
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Air Force Col. Harry Shoup, commander of Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Col. Harry Shoup was a real by-the-book guy.
At home, his two daughters were limited to phone calls of no more than three minutes (monitored by an egg timer) and were automatically grounded if they missed curfew by even a minute. At work, during his 28-year Air Force career, the decorated fighter pilot was known as a no-nonsense commander and a stickler for rules.
Which makes what happened that day in 1955 even more of a Christmas miracle.
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