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Born in 2006? Here's the world you arrived into

In 2006, "Bad Day" topped the charts, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest packed theaters, a stamp cost 39¢, the average home went for about $246,500.

What things cost in 2006

The $2.57 gallon of gas from 2006 equals about $4.15 in today's dollars, so the pain at the pump was real even then. A $6.55 movie ticket converts to roughly $10.60, and the newly raised 39-cent stamp to about 63 cents.

The biggest moments of 2006

• Astronomers reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet, shrinking the solar system to eight planets.
• High School Musical premiered on Disney Channel and became a singing, dancing phenomenon.
• Google bought a young video site called YouTube as online video exploded in popularity.

• A tiny messaging site called Twitter launched, asking users to share what they were doing in 140 characters or fewer, and hardly anyone understood why.
• Warren Buffett pledged roughly $31 billion to the Gates Foundation in June, the largest charitable gift in history at the time.
• Deal or No Deal fever gripped America, as Howie Mandel, 26 briefcases, and a mysterious Banker made "No deal!" a national catchphrase.

Toys, TV & trends of 2006

• The Nintendo Wii launched in November, and families everywhere swung remote controls at their TVs.
• The PlayStation 3 arrived the same month, causing long lines outside stores.
• Webkinz fever grew as kids raced home from school to feed their virtual pets.

• Hannah Montana premiered in March, and Miley Cyrus's double life as a secret pop star became the biggest thing on Disney Channel.
• T.M.X. Elmo, the giggling, rolling, knee-slapping Sesame Street toy, sold out within hours of its September launch.
• MySpace passed Google that summer to become the most-visited website in America, and choosing a Top 8 friends list was serious business.

The music scene

Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" made chart history as the first song ever to hit number one in Britain on downloads alone, before a single CD was sold. The best-selling album in America wasn't by a rock band or a rapper; it was the High School Musical soundtrack, powered by school-gym singalongs everywhere. And in October, a 16-year-old from Pennsylvania named Taylor Swift released her debut album with little fanfare outside country radio.

At the movies

After five previous nominations, Martin Scorsese finally won his Oscar when The Departed took Best Picture and Best Director. In one of the great animation upsets, the tap-dancing penguins of Happy Feet beat Pixar's Cars for the Best Animated Feature trophy. James Bond got a gritty reboot too, with newcomer Daniel Craig silencing doubters in Casino Royale.

Cartoons kids loved

• Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Ben 10
• SpongeBob SquarePants

Cartoon Network found its next franchise machine in Ben 10, a boy with an alien-transforming watch whose show was built from day one to spawn sequels, toys, and games. Meanwhile Avatar's celebrated second season proved that kids would follow a serialized story all year, changing what networks believed young viewers could handle.

The world in 2006

• World population: about 6.5 billion
• U.S. President: George W. Bush
• Italy won the FIFA World Cup, held in Germany, in a dramatic final decided on penalty kicks.

• Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated as President of Liberia in January, becoming Africa's first elected female head of state.
• Montenegro peacefully voted for independence and became one of the world's newest countries in June.
• NASA launched the New Horizons probe toward Pluto in January, months before Pluto lost its planet status; the little spacecraft kept flying anyway.

2006 birthday questions

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