Timeline August 2006

Events in August 2006 9

• 1911 – 2006 Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) Died 30 August 2006, aged 94 Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian novelist and Nobel laureate, died from complications after a fall in Cairo. He was the first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1988. His Cairo Trilogy remains a landmark of modern Arabic literature.
• 1916 – 2006 Glenn Ford (1916-2006) Canadian-born American actor, a leading man in Gilda, The Big Heat, Blackboard Jungle and 3:10 to Yuma.
• 2006 2006 Lebanon War Israel-Hezbollah conflict Hezbollah's cross-border raid and rocket attacks triggered a 34-day war with Israel across southern Lebanon. Extensive Israeli airstrikes and a ground invasion caused over a thousand deaths, mostly Lebanese civilians. A UN-brokered ceasefire ended the fighting in mid-August.
• 2006 Laptop battery recall — 4.1 million units Dell recalls 4.1 million laptop batteries in August 2006 — the largest battery recall in consumer electronics history at the time — after reports of laptops catching fire due to defective Sony-manufactured battery cells. Video of a Dell laptop erupting in flames at a Japanese conference spreads across the internet. The recall costs Dell $430 million. Coming after the capacitor scandal, it further erodes Dell's reputation for reliability.
• 2006 US Open 2006 Men: Roger Federer · Women: Maria Sharapova
• 2006 Grigori Perelman declines the Fields Medal Refusal after solving the Poincaré conjecture Grigori Perelman was awarded the Fields Medal for his proof of the Poincaré conjecture but declined to accept it or attend the ceremony in Madrid. He later also turned down the $1 million Clay Millennium Prize. His reclusiveness drew as much attention as the mathematical achievement itself.
• 2006 Pluto demoted to dwarf planet IAU redefines what is a planet The International Astronomical Union voted on August 24, 2006 to reclassify Pluto as a "dwarf planet", reducing the number of planets in the solar system from nine to eight.
• 2006 Comair Flight 5191 crash Airliner crashes on takeoff in Lexington A Comair regional jet crashed after attempting takeoff from the wrong, shorter runway at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky. Forty-nine of the 50 people aboard were killed. The disaster led to renewed scrutiny of runway safety procedures in the United States.
• 2006 Glenn Ford dies in Beverly Hills Glenn Ford dies aged 90.