Rewind to 18–24 June 2006, when Pluto got some new friends, a teenage country singer quietly launched a global empire and everyone suddenly learned what drifting was.

🤠 Taylor Swift starts the long game
A 16-year-old Taylor Swift released her debut single, ‘Tim McGraw’. It was a clever country song about hoping someone remembers you when they hear a favourite artist. Turns out the real story was that nearly 20 years later, the entire world would remember her.

🌌 Pluto's glow-up era
Pluto officially named its two newly discovered moons, Nix and Hydra, turning our favourite tiny planet into a full-blown mini solar system. Scientists were celebrating, school posters still had nine planets and nobody realised Pluto was only weeks away from one of the biggest demotions in science history.

🐢 Goodbye Harriet
Australia said farewell to Harriet the Galápagos tortoise, who died at the incredible age of 176. She'd lived through six British monarchs, possibly met Charles Darwin and spent her final years becoming an unlikely Australia Zoo celebrity.

🕺 Shakira breaks the planet
"Hips Don't Lie" was absolutely everywhere. The horns hit, millennials activated and Shakira's already-finished album suddenly became one of the biggest success stories of the decade. School discos, weddings, sporting events — there was no escape.

🚗 Tokyo Drift confuses everybody
The Fast & Furious franchise ditched most of its cast, moved to Japan and started talking about drifting. Fans weren't sure what was happening, but they were about to spend the next six months putting giant body kits on virtual cars and pretending they understood JDM culture.

⭐ America's Got Talent begins the chaos
NBC launched a talent show where singers, magicians, comedians, ventriloquists, dancing dogs and people making questionable life choices could all compete for a million dollars. Reality TV had officially entered its ‘anything goes’ phase

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Rewind to 11–17 June 2006, when Google officially became a verb, Nelly Furtado completed her glow-up from folk-pop darling to dancefloor queen and Pixar convinced an entire generation that a talking race car could have emotional depth.

🔍 Google wins the internet
This week, Google was officially added to the dictionary. That's right — a company became a verb. We look back at the moment Google conquered search, compare it to today's AI boom and ask the important question: if we used to Google everything, what are we calling it when we ask ChatGPT?

🚂 The most stressful POV footage ever
Long before dashcams and TikTok fails, a freight train collision in California became one of the first major accidents captured from the driver's perspective. The footage is terrifying, the town is called Kismet — literally means fate — and somehow this all feels very early YouTube.

🎸 Nostalgia for nostalgia
Sandi Thom's I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker topped charts around the world despite being a song about wishing you'd lived in a different decade. Which is funny, because now we're nostalgic for the song itself. The nostalgia cycle is complete.

🔥 Nelly's rebrand era
Promiscuous lands and suddenly the ‘I’m Like a Bird’ girl is gone. With Timbaland behind the controls, Nelly Furtado launches one of the biggest pop reinventions of the 2000s and gives us a song that still sounds like 2006 in the best possible way.

🎤 Touch this
Busta Rhymes scores the only number-one album of his career with The Big Bang, powered by Touch It — a song that was on every club playlist, every ringtone chart and eventually remixed with what felt like every rapper on Earth.

🚗 Ka-chow!
Cars races into cinemas and introduces the world to Lightning McQueen. Critics thought it was good, kids thought it was the greatest thing ever made and parents were about to spend the next decade stepping on tiny die-cast cars in the dark.

🔧 Welding, shouting, television
Monster Garage comes to an end after proving that almost anything can become a TV show if you add power tools, impossible deadlines and enough confidence. Peak Discovery Channel. Peak 2000s.

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Rewind to 4–10 June 2006…

💃 New era, who dis?
Nelly Furtado drops Loose and flips her entire brand overnight. Gone is the floaty ‘I’m Like a Bird’ era, in comes full Timbaland-produced main pop girl energy. It’s wall-to-wall hits and suddenly she owns the clubs, the charts and your iPod.

🚓 Small town, big feelings
After 12 years, Blue Heelers signs off and a nation quietly spirals. Mount Thomas felt like home, the characters felt like neighbours and we’re still not over Maggie Doyle. The finale marks the end of ‘everyone watching the same thing at the same time’ Aussie TV energy.

☄️ The sky literally goes boom
Somewhere in Arctic-adjacent Norway, a meteor explodes mid-air like a surprise jump scare from space. Windows shake, people wake up convinced it’s the end times and scientists later confirm: yep, just a casual airburst. No crater, no damage - just a reminder the universe can absolutely humble us at any moment.

🧱 This could’ve been an email
In Bristol, a suspected WWII bomb shuts down the city centre… only to be revealed as a chunky bit of concrete. Full evacuation, bomb squad, peak chaos — all for what is essentially aggressive pavement. To be fair, the UK doesn’t mess around with bomb scares… but still.

💔 Rom-com but make it… uncomfortable
The Break-Up hits #1 and tricks everyone into thinking it’s a cute love story. Instead? A painfully real look at a couple who break up but refuse to move out. Passive aggression, petty fights and one iconic lemon rant later, audiences are like… wow, that hit a bit too close to home.

📸 Reality TV but with zero HR
The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency premieres and immediately chooses chaos. Janice is yelling, models are crying and the line between tough love and are we okay with this? is… blurry. Peak 2000s reality TV where being unhinged wasn’t a bug, it was the format.

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