Year 2006

2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2006th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 6th year of the 3rd millennium, the 6th year of the 21st century, and the 7th year of the 2000s decade.

2006 was designated as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification and the International Asperger’s Year.

Events

January

• January 1 – Russia cuts the shipment of natural gas to Ukraine over a price dispute.
• January 12 – A stampede during the Stoning of the Devil ritual on the last day at the Hajj in Mina, Saudi Arabia, kills at least 362 pilgrims.
• January 15 – NASA’s Stardust mission successfully ends, the first to return dust from a comet.
• January 19 – NASA launches the first space mission to Pluto as a rocket hurls the New Horizons spacecraft on a nine-year journey.
• January 25 – The Walt Disney Company buys Pixar Animation Studios from Lucasfilm Ltd. for $7.4 billion, making Pixar a subsidiary of Walt Disney Pictures.

February

• February 3 – Egyptian passenger ferry, MS al-Salam Boccaccio 98, sinks in the Red Sea off the coast of Saudi Arabia, killing over 1,000 people.
• February 6 – Stephen Harper is elected as the Prime Minister of Canada.
• February 10–26 – The 2006 Winter Olympics are held in Turin, Italy.
• February 17 – A massive mudslide occurs in Southern Leyte, Philippines killing an estimated number of 1,126 people.
• February 20 – Six aircraft manufacturing of Russia, were merged, including Ilyushin, Sukhoi and Tupolev, which United Aircraft Corporation of Russia has start operation.

March

• March 9 – NASA’s Cassini–Huygens spacecraft discovers geysers of a liquid substance shooting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus, signaling a possible presence of water.
• March 10 – NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter enters orbit around Mars.
• March 14 – Total penumbral lunar eclipse.
• March 15 – The United Nations General Assembly votes overwhelmingly to establish the United Nations Human Rights Council.
• March 21 – Microblogging and Social networking service website Twitter launched.
• March 28 – A scramjet jet engine, HyShot III, designed to fly at seven times the speed of sound, is successfully tested at Woomera, South Australia.
• March 29 – Total solar eclipse.

April

• April 11
  • The European Space Agency’s Venus Express spaceprobe enters Venus’ orbit.
  • President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confirms that Iran has successfully produced a few grams of low-grade enriched uranium.
• April 20 – Iran announces a deal with Russia, involving a joint uranium enrichment firm on Russian soil; nine days later Iran announces that it will not move all activity to Russia, thus leading to a de facto termination of the deal.

May

• May 5 – Mickey Mouse Clubhouse starts and airs on Disney Channel (Playhouse Disney)
• May 17 – The Human Genome Project publishes the last chromosome sequence, in Nature.
• May 18–20 – The Eurovision Song Contest 2006 takes place in Athens, Greece, and is won by Finnish band entrant Lordi with the song “Hard Rock Hallelujah”.
• May 21 – Madonna begins her Confessions Tour in Los Angeles, USA. Tickets were sold out within minutes in North America, Europe, and Asia, resulting in new dates to be announced in New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and London. The tour grossed more than US$260 million – the highest-grossing tour in history by a female artist. It is also recognized as the highest-grossing music tour per concert in the 2007 edition of the Guinness World Records.
• May 27 – The 6.4 M_w  Yogyakarta earthquake shakes central Java in Indonesia with an MSK intensity of IX (Destructive), leaving more than 5,700 dead and 37,000 injured.

June

• June 3 – Montenegro declares its independence from Serbia and Montenegro after a May 21 referendum and becomes a sovereign state. Two days later, the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro officially disbands after Serbia declares its independence as well, ending an 88-year union between the two states and leaving Serbia as the successor country to the union.
• June 9 – July 9 – The 2006 FIFA World Cup takes place in Germany; which is won by Italy.
• June 28
  • Israel launches an offensive in the Gaza Strip in response to rocketfire by Hamas into Israeli territory.
  • The United States Armed Forces withdraws its forces in Iceland, thereby disbanding the Iceland Defense Force.

July

• July 1 – The Qinghai–Tibet railway launches a trial operation, making Tibet the last province-level entity of China to have a conventional railway.
• July 6 – The Nathu La pass between India and China, sealed during the Sino-Indian War, re-opens for trade after 44 years.
• July 11 – A series of seven bomb blasts hits the city of Mumbai, India, killing more than 200 people.
• July 12 – Israeli troops invade Lebanon in response to Hezbollah kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and killing three others. Hezbollah declares open war against Israel two days later.

August

• August 22 – Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise Flight 612 crashes near the Russian border in Ukraine, killing all 170 people on board.
• August 24 – The International Astronomical Union defines ‘planet’ at its 26th General Assembly, demoting Pluto to the status of dwarf planet 76 years after its discovery.

September

• September 1 — The popular video game Roblox is released.
• September 7 – Partial lunar eclipse.
• September 19 – The Royal Thai Army overthrows the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a coup d’état.
• September 22 – Annular solar eclipse.
• September 29 – Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 collides with a business jet over the Amazon rainforest, killing all 154 on board the former.

October

• October 4 – The domain name wikileaks.org is registered, founding WikiLeaks, an internet activist website, although the first WikiLeaks post was later in December of 2006.
• October 6 – Fredrik Reinfeldt replaces Göran Persson as Prime Minister of Sweden.
• October 9
  • North Korea claims to have conducted its first-ever nuclear test.
  • Google purchased YouTube for US$1.65 billion.
• October 13 – South Korean Ban Ki-moon is elected as the new Secretary-General of the United Nations, succeeding Kofi Annan.

November

• November 2 – No. 5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock becomes the most expensive painting after it is sold privately for $140 million.
• November 3 – Microsoft released Office 2007
• November 5 – Former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death by hanging by the Iraqi Special Tribunal. He is later executed by hanging for crimes against humanity on December 30.
• November 12 – The breakaway state of South Ossetia holds a referendum on independence from Georgia.
• November 22 – A toxic waste dumping incident occurs in Cote d’Ivoire by a Panama ship sent by Singaporean oil company, causing 3 deaths and the poison treatment of 1500 people.
• November 23 – A series of car bombs and mortar attacks in Sadr City, Baghdad, kills at least 215 people and injure 257 other people.

December

• December 1 – WikiLeaks leaked Hassan Dahir Aweys’ conspiracy to assassinate Somali government officials.
• December 5 – The military seizes power in Fiji, in a coup d’état led by Commodore Frank Bainimarama.
• December 11 – Felipe Calderón sends the Mexican military to combat the drug cartels and put down the violence in the state of Michoacán, initiating the Mexican Drug War.
• December 24 – Ethiopia admits its troops have intervened in Somalia.
• December 29 – UK settles its Anglo-American loan, post-WWII loan debt.

Births

• June 25 – Mckenna Grace, American actress
• September 6 – Prince Hisahito of Akishino, Japanese prince
• October 5 – Jacob Tremblay, Canadian actor

Deaths

January

• January 2 – Lidia Wysocka, Polish actress (b. 1916)
• January 3 – Bill Skate, 5th Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea (b. 1953)
• January 4
  • Irving Layton, Romanian-Canadian poet (b. 1912)
  • Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (b. 1943)
• January 6 – Lou Rawls, American singer, songwriter, actor, voice actor and record producer (b. 1933)
• January 7 – Heinrich Harrer, Austrian mountaineer, explorer and author (b. 1912)
• January 8 – Prince George, William of Hanover, German aristocrat (b. 1915)
• January 14 – Shelley Winters, American actress (b. 1920)
• January 15 – Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, 13th Emir of Kuwait (b. 1926)
• January 19
  • Anthony Franciosa, American actor (b. 1928)
  • Wilson Pickett, American singer (b. 1941)
• January 21 – Ibrahim Rugova, Kosovar writer, scholar and political leader (b. 1944)
• January 23 – Savino Guglielmetti, Italian gymnast (b. 1911)
• January 24 – Chris Penn, American actor (b. 1965)
• January 25 – Sudharmono, 5th Vice President of Indonesia (b. 1927)
• January 26 – Len Carlson, Canadian actor and voice actor (b. 1937)
• January 27 – Johannes Rau, 8th President of Germany (b. 1931)
• January 29 – Nam June Paik, South Korean-born American artist (b. 1932)
• January 30 – Coretta Scott King, American civil rights activist (b. 1927)
• January 31 – George Koval, Soviet intelligence agent (b. 1913)

February

• February 3 – Al Lewis, American actor (b. 1923)
• February 4 – Betty Friedan, American feminist, activist, and writer (b. 1921)
• February 8 – Akira Ifukube, Japanese classical music/film composer (b. 1914)
• February 10 – J Dilla, American music producer (b. 1974)
• February 12 – Peter Benchley, American writer (b. 1940)
• February 13
  • Andreas Katsulas, American actor (b. 1946)
  • P. F. Strawson, English philosopher (b. 1919)
• February 15 – Sun Yun-suan, 10th Premier of the Republic of China (b. 1913)
• February 18 – Sirr Al-Khatim Al-Khalifa, 5th Prime Minister of Sudan (b. 1919)
• February 21 – Mirko Marjanović, 63rd Prime Minister of Serbia (b. 1937)
• February 22
  • S. Rajaratnam, Singaporean politician, 1st Senior Minister of Singapore (b. 1915)
  • Said Mohamed Djohar, 2-Time President of the Comoros (b. 1919)
• February 23 – Telmo Zarra, Spanish footballer (b. 1921)
• February 24
  • Octavia E. Butler, American author and writer (b. 1947)
  • Don Knotts, American actor and comedian (b. 1924)
  • Dennis Weaver, American actor (b. 1924)
• February 25 – Darren McGavin, American actor (b. 1922)
• February 28 – Owen Chamberlain, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1920)
• February 28 – Zoia Ceaușescu, Romanian mathematician (b. 1949)

March

• March 1 – Peter Osgood, English footballer (b. 1947)
• March 6 – Dana Reeve, American actress (b. 1961)
• March 7 – Gordon Parks, American photographer (b. 1912)
• March 9
  • Anna Moffo, American operatic soprano (b. 1932)
  • John Profumo, British politician (b. 1915)
• March 11 – Slobodan Milošević, 3rd President of Serbia (b. 1941)
• March 13
  • Jimmy Johnstone, Scottish footballer (b. 1944)
  • Maureen Stapleton, American actress (b. 1925)
• March 14 – Lennart Meri, 2nd President of Estonia (b. 1929)
• March 15 – Georgios Rallis, Prime Minister of Greece (b. 1918)
• March 17 – Bob Papenbrook, American voice actor (b. 1955)
• March 23 – Desmond Doss, American combat medic (b. 1919)
• March 25
  • Rocío Dúrcal, Spanish singer and actress (b. 1944)
  • Richard Fleischer, American film director (b. 1916)
  • Buck Owens, American, singer, bandleader, and TV host (b. 1929)
• March 26 – Paul Dana, American racing driver (b. 1975)
• March 27 – Stanisław Lem, Polish writer (b. 1921)
• March 28 – Caspar Weinberger, 15th United States Secretary of Defense (b. 1917)

April

• April 5 – Gene Pitney, American singer (b. 1941)
• April 8 – Gerard Reve, Dutch author (b. 1923)
• April 11 – Proof, American rapper (b. 1973)
• April 12 – Rajkumar, Indian actor and singer (b. 1929)
• April 13 – Muriel Spark, Scottish-born novelist (b. 1918)
• April 21 – Telê Santana, Brazilian footballer and coach (b. 1931)
• April 23 – Alida Valli, Italian actress (b. 1921)
• April 24 – Brian Labone, English footballer (b. 1940)
• April 25 – Jane Jacobs, American-born Canadian writer and activist (b. 1916)
• April 26 – Yuval Ne’eman, Israeli theoretical physicist, military scientist, and politician (b. 1925)
• April 29 – John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian economist (b. 1908)

May

• May 3 – Karel Appel, Dutch painter (b. 1921)
• May 6 – Shigeru Kayano, Japanese activist (b. 1926)
• May 11 – Floyd Patterson, American boxer (b. 1935)
• May 12 – Hussein Maziq, Prime Minister of Libya (b. 1918)
• May 13 – Jaroslav Pelikan, American historian (b. 1923)
• May 14 – Robert Bruce Merrifield, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1921)
• May 22 – Lee Jong-wook, Korean Director-General of the World Health Organisation (b. 1945)
• May 23 – Lloyd Bentsen, American politician (b. 1921)
• May 25 – Desmond Dekker, Jamaican singer and songwriter (b. 1941)
• May 26 – Édouard Michelin, French businessman (b. 1963)
• May 27 – Paul Gleason, American actor (b. 1939)
• May 30 – Shohei Imamura, Japanese film director (b. 1926)
• May 31 – Raymond Davis Jr., American chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1914)

June

• June 1 – Rocío Jurado, Spanish singer (b. 1946)
• June 2 – Vince Welnick, American keyboardist for The Grateful Dead (b. 1951)
• June 6 – Billy Preston, American artist and musician (b. 1946)
• June 7 – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Jordanian militant and founder of Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (now ISIS) (b. 1966)
• June 8 – Robert Donner, American actor (b. 1931)
• June 12 – György Ligeti, Hungarian composer (b. 1923)
• June 13 – Charles Haughey, 7th Taoiseach of Ireland (b. 1925)
• June 18 – Vincent Sherman, American film director and actor (b. 1906)
• June 23 – Aaron Spelling, American television producer (b. 1923)
• June 25 – Arif Mardin, Turkish-American music producer (b. 1932)
• June 28 – Lennie Weinrib, American actor, voice actor, comedian and writer (b. 1935)

July

• July 1 – Ryutaro Hashimoto, 53rd Prime Minister of Japan (b. 1937)
• July 5
  • Gert Fredriksson, Swedish kayaker (b. 1919)
  • Kenneth Lay, American businessman (b. 1942)
• July 7
  • Syd Barrett, English singer, songwriter, and guitarist (b. 1946)
  • Elias Hrawi, 9th President of Lebanon (b. 1925)
  • John Money, psychologist and author known for his research in gender identity (b. 1921)
• July 8 – June Allyson, American actress (b. 1917)
• July 10 – Shamil Basayev, Chechen rebel (b. 1965)
• July 11 – Barnard Hughes, American actor (b. 1915)
• July 13 – Red Buttons, American actor and comedian (b. 1919)
• July 14 – Aleksander Wojtkiewicz, Polish chess grandmaster (b. 1963)
• July 17 – Mickey Spillane, American writer (b. 1918)
• July 19 – Jack Warden, American actor (b. 1920)
• July 21
  • Mako, Japanese-American actor and singer (b. 1933)
  • J. Madison Wright Morris, American actress (b. 1984)
  • Ta Mok, Cambodian military leader (b. 1926)
• July 30 – Murray Bookchin, American libertarian socialist (b. 1921)

August

• August 3
  • Arthur Lee, American musician (b. 1945)
  • Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, German-born soprano (b. 1915)
• August 9 – James Van Allen, American physicist (b. 1914)
• August 13 – Tony Jay, English-American actor and voice artist (b. 1933)
• August 14 – Bruno Kirby, American actor, singer and comedian (b. 1949)
• August 15
  • Te Atairangikaahu, Maori queen (b. 1931)
  • Faas Wilkes, Dutch footballer (b. 1923)
• August 16 – Alfredo Stroessner, 42nd President of Paraguay (b. 1912)
• August 19 – Óscar Míguez, Uruguayan footballer (b. 1927)
• August 20 – Joe Rosenthal, American photographer (b. 1911)
• August 21
  • Bismillah Khan, Indian musician (b. 1916)
  • S. Yizhar, Israeli writer (b. 1916)
• August 23 – Maynard Ferguson, Canadian musician and bandleader (b. 1928)
• August 25 – Noor Hassanali, 2nd President of Trinidad and Tobago (b. 1918)
• August 26 – Rainer Barzel, German politician (b. 1924)
• August 27 – Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Indian filmmaker (b. 1922)
• August 28 – Melvin Schwartz, American physicist (b. 1932)
• August 30
  • Glenn Ford, Canadian actor (b. 1916)
  • Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian Nobel writer (b. 1911)

September

• September 1 – György Faludy, Hungarian poet (b. 1910)
• September 2 – Bob Mathias, American athlete (b. 1930)
• September 4
  • Giacinto Facchetti, Italian footballer (b. 1942)
  • Steve Irwin, Australian environmentalist and television personality (b. 1962)
• September 7 – Robert Earl Jones, American actor and boxer (b. 1910)
• September 8 – Peter Brock, Australian racing driver (b. 1945)
• September 10 – Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV, 4th King of Tonga (b. 1918)
• September 11
  • Pat Corley, American actor (b. 1930)
  • Joachim Fest, German historian and journalist (b. 1926)
• September 14 – Mickey Hargitay, Hungarian-born actor and bodybuilder (b. 1926)
• September 15
  • Oriana Fallaci, Italian journalist (b. 1929)
  • Pablo Santos, Mexican actor (b. 1987)
• September 17 – Zsuzsa Körmöczy, Hungarian tennis player and coach (b. 1924)
• September 17 – Patricia Kennedy Lawford, American socialite (b. 1924)
• September 18 – Nilton Pereira Mendes, Brazilian footballer (b. 1976)
• September 22 – Edward Albert, American actor (b. 1951)
• September 23 – Malcolm Arnold, English composer (b. 1921)
• September 26
  • Byron Nelson, American golfer (b. 1912)
  • Iva Toguri D’Aquino, American propagandist for Japan in World War II (b. 1916)
• September 28 – Jan Werner Danielsen, Norwegian pop singer (b. 1976)

October

• October 2 – Paul Halmos, Hungarian-born American mathematician and statistician (b. 1916)
• October 4 – Tom Bell, English actor (b. 1933)
• October 7 – Anna Politkovskaya, American-born Russian journalist (b. 1958)
• October 9 – Paul Hunter, British snooker player (b. 1978)
• October 11 – Cory Lidle, American baseball player (b. 1972)
• October 12 – Carlo Acutis, English-born Italian Catholic computer programmer (b. 1991)
• October 16 – Valentín Paniagua, President of Peru (b. 1936)
• October 20 – Jane Wyatt, American actress (b. 1910)
• October 21 – Sandy West, American rock musician, former member of The Runaways (b. 1959)
• October 22 – Choi Kyu-hah, 4th President of South Korea (b. 1919)
• October 27 – Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Pakistani civil servant and 7th President of Pakistan (b. 1915)
• October 28
  • Red Auerbach, American basketball coach and official (b. 1917)
  • Trevor Berbick, Jamaican boxer (b. 1954)
• October 30 – Clifford Geertz, American anthropologist (b. 1926)
• October 31 – P. W. Botha, former State President of South Africa (b. 1916)

November

• November 1
  • Adrienne Shelly, American actress and director (b. 1966)
  • William Styron, American writer (b. 1925)
• November 3
  • Paul Mauriat, French musician (b. 1925)
  • Alberto Spencer, Ecuadorian-Uruguayan footballer (b. 1937)
• November 4 – Sergi López Segú, Spanish footballer (b. 1967)
• November 5
  • Bülent Ecevit, 16th Prime Minister of Turkey (b. 1925)
  • Pietro Rava, Italian footballer and coach (b. 1916)
• November 6 – Francisco Fernández Ochoa, Spanish ski racer (b. 1950)
• November 7 – Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, French journalist (b. 1924)
• November 8 – Basil Poledouris, American composer (b. 1945)
• November 9 – Ed Bradley, American journalist (b. 1941)
• November 10 – Jack Palance, American actor (b. 1919)
• November 11 – Esther Lederberg, American microbiologist (b. 1922)
• November 15 – Ana Carolina Reston, Brazilian fashion model (b. 1985)
• November 16 – Milton Friedman, American Nobel economist (b. 1912)
• November 17
  • Ruth Brown, American singer (b. 1928)
  • Ferenc Puskás, Hungarian footballer (b. 1927)
• November 20 – Robert Altman, American film director (b. 1925)
• November 21
  • Pierre Amine Gemayel, Lebanese politician (b. 1972)
  • Hassan Gouled Aptidon, 1st President of Djibouti (b. 1916)
• November 22 – Asima Chatterjee, Indian chemist (b. 1917)
• November 23
  • Alexander Litvinenko, Russian-born spy (b. 1962)
  • Philippe Noiret, French actor (b. 1930)
  • Anita O’Day, American singer (b. 1919)
• November 26 – Isaac Galvez, Spanish racing cyclist (b. 1975)
• November 29 – Allen Carr, British author (b. 1934)

December

• December 1 – Claude Jade, French actress (b. 1948)
• December 2 – Mariska Veres, Dutch singer (b. 1947)
• December 5
  • David Bronstein, Soviet Union chess grandmaster (b. 1924)
  • Gernot Jurtin, Austrian footballer (b. 1955)
• December 6 – Han Ahmedow, 1st Prime Minister of Turkmenistan (b. 1936)
• December 7
  • Lyuben Berov, 43rd Prime Minister of Bulgaria (b. 1925)
  • Jeane Kirkpatrick, American political theorist and U.N. ambassador (b. 1926)
• December 8 – Martha Tilton, American singer (b. 1915)
• December 9 – Georgia Gibbs, American singer (b. 1919)
• December 10 – Augusto Pinochet, 31st President of Chile (b. 1915)
• December 11 – Elizabeth Bolden, American supercentenarian (b. 1890)
• December 12
  • Paul Arizin, American basketball player (b. 1928)
  • Peter Boyle, American actor (b. 1935)
• December 13 – Lamar Hunt, American businessman (b. 1932)
• December 14
  • Ahmet Ertegun, Turkish record executive (b. 1923)
  • Mike Evans, American actor (b. 1949)
• December 15 – Clay Regazzoni, Swiss race car driver (b. 1939)
• December 18 – Joseph Barbera, American animator (b. 1911)
• December 21 – Saparmurat Niyazov, 1st President of Turkmenistan (b. 1940)
• December 22
  • Elena Mukhina, Soviet artistic gymnast (b. 1960)
  • Galina Ustvolskaya, Russian composer (b. 1919)
• December 25 – James Brown, American singer (b. 1933)
• December 26 – Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States (b. 1913)
• December 30 – Saddam Hussein, 5th President of Iraq (b. 1937)
• December 31 – Ya’akov Hodorov, Israeli footballer (b. 1927)

Nobel Prizes

• Chemistry – Roger D. Kornberg.
• Economics – Edmund Phelps.
• Literature – Orhan Pamuk.
• Peace – Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank.
• Physics – John C. Mather, and George F. Smoot.
• Physiology or Medicine – Andrew Z. Fire, and Craig C. Mello.

New English words and terms

• Agender
• Bucket list
• crowdfunding
• crowdsourcing
• Eris
• hypermiling
• Mumblecore
• sizzle reel
• ski cross