Short answers, pulled from the story.
Santa Claus traces back to Saint Nicholas, a 4th-century Greek Christian bishop of Myra in the Roman province of Lycia, in what is now Turkey. Nicholas was known for giving his personal wealth to the poor, including providing dowries to three impoverished daughters so they would not have to be prostituted. His bones are enshrined in the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari, Italy, after merchants removed them from Myra in 1087.
A Visit from St. Nicholas, published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel on the 23rd of December 1823, first described Santa arriving in a miniature sleigh pulled by eight named reindeer. Clement Clarke Moore later claimed authorship, though scholars have also attributed the poem to Henry Livingston Jr. The reindeer were named Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder and Blixem, with the last two names derived from Dutch words for thunder and lightning.
No. The Coca-Cola Company did not invent Santa Claus or his red-and-white appearance. White Rock Beverages used colour images of Santa in advertisements from 1923 to 1925, and Santa appeared in red and white on covers of Puck magazine in the early 20th century, both predating the Haddon Sundblom paintings made for Coca-Cola in the 1930s.
The cartoonist Thomas Nast is credited with establishing Santa's North Pole home. His Christmas image in the 29th of December 1866 issue of Harper's Weekly included the caption Santa Claussville, N.P., and a colour collection of his pictures published in 1869 included a poem by George P. Webster placing Santa's home near the North Pole, in the ice and snow.
Canada Post assigns Santa Claus the postal code H0H 0H0, a reference to his signature laugh. On the 23rd of December 2008, Jason Kenney, Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, formally awarded Santa Claus Canadian citizenship, noting his right to re-enter Canada after his Christmas Eve journey.
NORAD Tracks Santa began in 1955 when a Sears-Roebuck advertisement incorrectly printed a phone number intended for a Santa hotline, and the calls instead reached the Continental Air Defense Command. The programme was transferred to NORAD when it was jointly founded by the United States and Canada in 1958.