2006

2006 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. It has been designated:

• The International Year of Deserts and Desertification

• The Mozart Year, celebrating the 250th birthday of the Austrian composer Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Predicted and scheduled events

January-February

• January 1 - Deadline by which the small remainder of non-metric road distance signs in the Republic of Ireland must be changed to metric units.
• January 1 - revaluation of the Azerbaijani manat.
• January 1 - Requirement of television stations in the US to broadcast analog signals are lifted.
• January 1 - Shock jock Howard Stern contract with Sirius satellite radio begins.
• January 1 - 30 Cities across the Canadian Province of Quebec will be reconstituted, as the result of a referendum held June 20, 2004.
• January 1- NJ Transit takes over Clocker service from Amtrak
• January 9 - Planned launch date of New Horizons
• January 15 - First round of the Finnish presidential election
• January 29 - Second round (if needed) of the Finnish presidential election
• February 5 - Super Bowl XL to be held at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan
• February 9 - Independence referendum in Serbia and Montenegro
• February 10 to February 26 - XX Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy
• February 28 - Mardi Gras

March-June

• March 1 - Ash Wednesday
• March 5 - 78th Academy Awards handed out in Hollywood, California
• March 15 to March 26 - 2006 Commonwealth Games scheduled in Melbourne, Australia.
• March 29 - Total solar eclipse (Brazil, Mid Atlantic ocean, Sahara Desert, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia)
  • Attack Submarines USS-Lapon to start to be deactivated. Los Angeles class submarines USS Indianapolis, USS-Birmingham, USS-New York City and USS-Atlanta also begin to be deactivated
• April 1 to April 3 - NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four to be held at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana.
• April 2 - WrestleMania 22 to be held at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois
  • Former Connecticut governor John Rowland is scheduled to be released from the federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania.
• April 14 to April 17 - Breakpoint 2006 will take place in Bingen
• April 16 - Easter (Western)
• April 23 - Easter (Eastern)
• May 16 - Statistics Canada to hold Census [1]
• May 19- The Da Vinci Code movie is released to movie theatres in the United States.
• May 26- X-Men 3 is released to movie theatres in the United States.
• June 1 - the date, written out in the standard US style is 6/1/06, which is the new Number of the Beast.
• June 6 - the date is 6/6/06. See the Number of the Beast.
• June 9 to July 9 - 18th Football World Cup scheduled in Germany.

July-December

• July 1 - Smaller 10-, 20-, and 50-cent coins will start circulating in New Zealand.
• July 2 - Presidential election of Mexico.
• July 29 to August 5 - World Congress of Esperanto in Florence, Italy.
• August 1 - Australian Bureau of Statistics to hold a census.
• Unknown date - In Germany elections for the Bundestag are to be held. This is likely not to happen because of the eventual dissolve of the Bundestag.
• September 22 - Annular solar eclipse (South America, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean).
• September 24 - Sweden holds elections for the Riksdag.
• October 1 - 5-cent pieces will cease to be legal tender in New Zealand, and the larger 10-, 20-, and 50-cent piece will suffer the same fate.
• October 24 - NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft to Mercury makes the first of two Venus flybys.
• November 1 - Official ratification of EU Constitution, provided that all EU member states have ratified it.
• November 7 - US Mid-term Election which includes all 435 seats of the US House of Representatives, 33 of the 100 seats in the US Senate, and gubernatorial elections in 36 of the 50 states as well as many other state-wide offices in those states such as attorneys general and state auditors
• November 8 - Transit of Mercury
• December 31 - Italy will officially cease analog television transmissions and will definitely switch to DTTV.

Unknown/undecided dates

• Maddox, owner of The Best Page in the Universe is due out with a book in March of this year.
• Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin has pledged in April 2005 to call the 39th Canadian federal election 30 days following the final report of the Commission of Inquiry on the Sponsorship Program expected by December 15, 2005.
• The third Chinese manned space mission Shenzhou 7 is scheduled with the first Chinese space walk ever to be performed.
• Finland plans to cease analog television broadcasts.
• Airbus plans to release into service Airbus A380, the biggest airliner in the world.
• Microsoft plans to release Windows Longhorn, a computer operating system (as indicated by Bill Gates)
• The European Space Agency plans to launch the KEO space time capsule
• The Republic of Ireland is expected to hold a referendum on the European Constitution (although 2005 is possible, from statements made by minsters, 2006 is more likely).
• OpenOffice.org is expected to release the Aqua version of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X.
• Manuel Noriega becomes eligible for parole.
• The Osaka Outer Loop Line and the eighth line of the Osaka City Subway are scheduled to open in Osaka, Japan.
• Wembley Stadium expected to open after renovations.
• Kobe Airport, a controversial offshore airport in Kobe, Japan, is scheduled to open for airline service in the Northern spring.
• World oil production peaks this year according to "The Peak Of World Oil Production And The Road To The Olduvai Gorge" by Richard C. Duncan.
• The new Nintendo Revolution will be released worldwide
• The new Sony PlayStation 3 will be released worldwide, most likely in the spring.
• General election in Italy, probably for the first half of the year.
• Apple_Computer to release the first Macintosh with an Intel processor. The PowerPC switch should be completed sometime within this year.
• Al Jazeera will launch its new satellite service, Al Jazeera International, in Europe, Asia, and North America sometime in March.

Fiction

• June 28 to June 29 - The events of the Doctor Who episodes Aliens of London and World War Three take place.

• Around December of this year - The events of Doctor Who episode Boom Town take place.