2006

## 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 and now Pixar is 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 10–26 – The 2006 Winter Olympics are held in Turin, Italy.
* February 17 – A massive mudslide occurs in Southern Leyte, Philippines killing an estimated 1,126 people.

### 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 15 – The United Nations General Assembly votes overwhelmingly to establish the United Nations Human Rights Council.
* 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.

### 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 17 – The Human Genome Project publishes the last chromosome sequence, in *Nature*.
* May 27 – The 6.4 Yogyakarta earthquake shakes central Java with an MSK intensity of IX (Destructive), leaving more than 5,700 dead and 37,000 injured.

### June

* June 3 – Montenegro declares independence after a May 21 referendum. Two days later, the republic of Serbia and Montenegro formed in 2003 collapses, leaving Serbia as the successor country.
* 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 more than 70 years after its discovery.

### September

* September 19 – The Royal Thai Army overthrows the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a *coup d'état*.
* 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 6 – Fredrik Reinfeldt replaces Göran Persson as Prime Minister of Sweden.
* October 9 – North Korea claims to have conducted its first-ever nuclear test.
* 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 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 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 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 26 – An oil pipeline explodes in Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos, killing at least 200 people.
* December 29 – UK settles its Anglo-American loan, post-WWII loan debt.