2006 Snapshot
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The Vibe
Pop Culture
Twitter Launch
Slang
"Sick"
Price Check
Gas: $2.59
Notable Deaths
James Brown, Gerald Ford, Steve Irwin
Music & Style
Dance-Rock
World Affairs
Saddam Executed
Lebanon War
Year's Summary
- Global Events: Twitter is launched. North Korea conducts its first nuclear test. Pluto is 'demoted' to a dwarf planet. The population of the US reaches 300 million.
- Culture & Mood: 'You' are named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year due to the explosion of user-generated content (YouTube, Wikipedia, Blogs).
- Fashion & Slang: Waist-belts and Crocs. 'Epic win' or 'Epic fail.'
- Fun Fact: The Nintendo Wii is released, bringing motion-controlled gaming to grandmas and kids alike, and High School Musical becomes a Disney Channel phenomenon.
- 21 Mar 2006: Jack Dorsey Posts the First Tweet Launching Twitter – Software engineer Jack Dorsey posted the first message on a new microblogging platform called Twitter, reading "just setting up my twttr." The service introduced real-time, 140-character messaging, fundamentally altering public political discourse, real-time news dissemination, and digital social networking around the globe.
- 21 May 2006: Montenegro Votes to End Union with Serbia in Historic Referendum – Citizens of Montenegro voted in a officially monitored national referendum to separate from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, surpassing the required 55 percent threshold for independence. The vote peacefully dissolved the last remaining political union of the former Yugoslavia, restoring Montenegro's sovereign independence.
- 9 Jul 2006: Italy Wins FIFA World Cup Final Over France in Berlin – Italy secured its fourth FIFA World Cup title in a dramatically intense final match at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, defeating France 5-3 in a penalty shootout following a 1-1 draw. The match was globally memorable for French icon Zinédine Zidane's headbutt against Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini, resulting in a red card in his final professional match.
- 24 Aug 2006: International Astronomical Union Reclassifies Pluto as a Dwarf Planet – Meeting at the General Assembly in Prague, the International Astronomical Union formally adopted a scientific definition for a planet, requiring a celestial body to clear the neighborhood around its orbit. Because Pluto shares its orbital space with other Kuiper Belt objects, it was reclassified as a "dwarf planet," reducing the official planetary count of the Solar System from nine to eight.
- 9 Oct 2006: North Korea Conducts First Successful Underground Nuclear Test – The Democratic People's Republic of Korea announced it had conducted its first underground nuclear explosive test in North Hamgyong Province. The test was detected as a magnitude 4.3 seismic event worldwide, drawing unanimous condemnation from the United Nations Security Council and escalating global non-proliferation concerns across East Asia.
- 30 Dec 2006: Execution of Former Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein – Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging in Baghdad following his conviction by the Iraqi Special Tribunal for crimes against humanity related to the 1982 Dujail massacre. The execution concluded a high-profile legal trial and marked a symbolic milestone in post-invasion Iraqi politics.