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Hey, history lovers.

I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

One December day in 1955, Colonel Harry Schaup, a highly decorated Air Force commander,

was sitting at his desk in Colorado when the phone rang.

This was not just any old phone call either, which Schaup quickly realized. How?

Because Shaup had two phones on his desk, one black, one red. The red one was ringing.

At the height of the Cold War, if you are Colonel Schaup, a commander in the early iteration

of NORAD, America's defensive warning shield against attacks, you don't want the red phone

to ring.

It was wired directly to a four-star general at the Pentagon. And when it rang, things got real.

Very real.

Except this time.

Colonel shout, he barked into the phone.

But there was silence on the other end,

until finally, a small voice said,

Is this Santa Claus?

...