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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