Timeline January 2006

Events in January 2006 20

• 1914 – 2006 Fayard Nicholas (1914-2006) American dancer, one of the Nicholas Brothers, famous for acrobatic tap routines.
• 1920 – 2006 Shelley Winters (1920-2006) American actress with a career of six decades, winner of two Oscars, for The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue.
• 1927 – 2006 Coretta Scott King (1927-2006) Died 30 January 2006, aged 78 Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr. and a civil rights leader in her own right, died following a stroke and complications from ovarian cancer. She had continued civil rights activism for decades after her husband's assassination. Her funeral was attended by four US presidents.
• 1941 – 2006 Wilson Pickett (1941-2006) Died 19 January 2006, aged 64 Wilson Pickett, the American soul singer known for hits like "In the Midnight Hour" and "Mustang Sally," died of a heart attack in Virginia. He was one of the defining voices of 1960s soul music. He had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.
• 2006 Australian Open 2006 Men: Roger Federer · Women: Amélie Mauresmo
• 2006 2006: Fernando Alonso Renault Alonso successfully defended his title, fending off Schumacher in a fierce battle that saw the German retire at the end of the season.
• 2006 Dancing with the Stars Competed on Dancing with the Stars, showing a self-deprecating charm that contrasted with his confrontational show persona.
• 2006 Doctoral Student Andrew Fire Wins Nobel Prize His former doctoral student Andrew Fire was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of RNA interference, a gene-silencing mechanism. The award underscored the extraordinary influence of Sharp's laboratory on the field of RNA biology.
• 2006 Franz Kafka Prize Received the Franz Kafka Prize, an international literary award. Several previous winners had gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, fuelling annual speculation about Murakami.
• 2006 Stepped Down Stepped down as Toyota's chairman after eleven years of leading the company. Under his tenure, Toyota had risen from Japan's largest automaker to one challenging General Motors for the global crown.
• 2006 Teddy Boy EP — Kavinsky Is Born Released the Teddy Boy EP on the French label Record Makers, introducing the fictional Kavinsky persona: a zombie driver who crashed his Ferrari Testarossa in 1986 and returned from the dead to make electronic music. The sound — pulsing synthesisers inspired by 1980s movie soundtracks, arcade games and sports cars — helped define what would become known as synthwave.
• 2006 Shelley Winters dies in Beverly Hills Shelley Winters dies aged 85.
• 2006 Stardust returns comet samples First comet material brought to Earth NASA's Stardust spacecraft returned to Earth on January 15, 2006, carrying samples from comet Wild 2 — the first comet material ever brought back to Earth for study.
• 2006 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf inaugurated as Liberia's president First elected female head of state in Africa Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in as President of Liberia after winning the 2005 election. She became the first woman elected as a head of state anywhere in Africa. Her presidency focused on postwar reconstruction after Liberia's civil wars.
• 2006 New Horizons launches toward Pluto NASA probe begins nine-year journey NASA launched the New Horizons spacecraft from Cape Canaveral on a mission to fly past Pluto and its moons. It was the fastest spacecraft ever launched at the time. The probe would go on to make its historic Pluto flyby in 2015.
• 2006 Wilson Pickett dies Reston, Virginia Dies of a heart attack, aged 64.
• 2006 Fayard Nicholas dies Fayard Nicholas dies aged 91.
• 2006 Hamas wins Palestinian legislative election Upset victory over Fatah Hamas won a decisive majority in elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council, defeating the long-dominant Fatah party. The result led Israel, the US and EU to cut off direct aid, and deepened the Fatah-Hamas rift. It reshaped Palestinian politics for years afterward.
• 2006 Muhammad cartoons controversy escalates Global protests over Danish newspaper drawings Reprinting of Jyllands-Posten's cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad by other European papers triggered mass protests across the Muslim world. Danish embassies were attacked and boycotts of Danish goods spread widely. The episode became a flashpoint in debates over free speech and religious sensitivity.
• 2006 Retires after 18 years — the Maestro departs Greenspan retires as Federal Reserve Chairman on 31 January 2006, succeeded by Ben Bernanke. He is 79 years old and has served 18 years and 6 months — the second-longest tenure in the Fed's history. He is celebrated as 'the Maestro' — the title of Bob Woodward's 2000 biography — who had guided the US economy through the longest peacetime expansion in history (1991-2001). Time magazine puts him on its cover as one of the 'Committee to Save the World.' His retirement is marked by universal praise. Two years later, everything changes.