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January
2nd |
An explosion inside a coal mine in West Virginia, USA, caused the death of 12 miners. |
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January
2nd |
Fifteen people died when the roof of an ice rink collapsed in Bavaria, Germany. |
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January
12th |
A stampede during the Stoning the Devil ritual in Mina, Saudi Arabia, resulted in the death of more than 360 Muslim pilgrims. |
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January
12th |
Mehmet Ali Agca was released from a Turkish prison after serving 25 years for attempting to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981. |
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January
16th |
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is sworn in as Liberia's new president. She becomes Africa's first female elected head of state. |
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January
22nd |
Evo Morales was inaugurated as the president of Bolivia. He is the country's first indigenous president. |
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January
26th |
Western Union discontinued its telegraph service after 155 years of service. |
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February
13th |
American actor, Andreas Katsulas, died at the age of 51. He was best known for his role as Ambassador G'Kar in the science fiction television series Babylon 5 and his role in the hit movie, Fugitive. He died of lung cancer, brought about by his life-long habit of smoking. |
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February
19th |
The Rolling Stones performed the largest ever free concert in Copacabana beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. More than 1.3 million people attended the concert. |
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February
22nd |
The biggest robbery in Britain's history took place at a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent. The perpetrators made off with more than 76 million euros. |
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March
9th |
British politician, John Profumo, died at the age of 90. He is most remembered as having been the central person in the scandalous Profumo Affair in 1963 which was one of the worst political scandals in 20th century Britain. |
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March
15th |
Greek politician, George Rallis, died at the age of 87. He was the descendant of a long line of Greek politicians, having been a third generation prime minister of Greece, although his tenure as prime minister was short lived as he only served for a year after the retirement of Constantine Karamanlis. He was defeated in the next year's election by Andreas Panadreou's PASOK political party. |
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June
12th |
Hungarian composer, Gyorgy Ligeti, died at the age of 82. He is considered as one of the great composers of instrumental music of the later part of the 20th century. His music has been featured on numerous films by the late film director Stanley Kubrick. |
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June
21st |
Pluto's newly discovered moons were officially christened Nix & Hydra. |
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June
26th |
The Republic of Montenegro was admitted to the United Nations as its 192nd member. |
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July
7th |
British musician, Syd Barrett, died at the age of 49. He is most known for having been one of the early members of the Pink Floyd band. |
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July
9th |
A Sibir Airlines passenger jet crashed while landing at Irkutsk Airport, Siberia. 122 people died in the crash. |
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July
9th |
Italy won the 2006 FIFA World Cup, defeating France 5-3 on penalty kicks after a 1-1 draw. It was Italy's 4th World Cup win. The event was marred by the dramatic exit from football of star player Zinedine Zidane who was ejected for head butting Marco Materazzi. |
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July
10th |
A Pakistan International Airlines flight crashed in Multan, Pakistan shortly after takeoff. All 45 people on board died in the crash. |
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July
11th |
A series of 11 bombs exploded in the suburban railway system of Mumbai, India. More than 200 people were killed and 700 injured in the explosions. |
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July
11th |
Microsoft announced that support for its Windows 98 and Windows Me operating systems was suspended. |
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July
17th |
American author, Mickey Spillane, died at the age of 87. He was one of the most famous authors of crime novels in the 20th century and the creator of the famous detective character, Mike Hammer. |
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July
30th |
The music chart's television program, Top of the Pops, was broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show first aired in 1962 and was the longest running music related show in the history of television. |
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August
14th |
The 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict cease fire went into effect, ending the conflict that had began 32 days earlier with the abduction of two Israeli soldiers by the Hezbolah militant group. |
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August
22nd |
A Pulkovo Airlines passenger flight crashed in the Ukraine, resulting in the death of all 170 people onboard. |
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August
24th |
The term 'planet' was redefined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Under the new definition Pluto is no longer considered to be a planet but rather a dwarf planet. |
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October
9th |
North Korea allegedly detonated its first nuclear device (weapon). |
