March 26, 2006

Gas cost $2.59 a gallon in the spring of 2006, and the Dow Jones stood at 12,463 — the Taliban was reasserting itself across southern Afghanistan, signaling that the post-invasion stabilization effort faced serious new challenges. On television, "American Idol" was the dominant show in the country, drawing tens of millions of viewers each week, while Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" sat at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for months and became one of the most-played songs of the year. The Miami Heat defeated the Dallas Mavericks to win the NBA championship, and that spring scientists working on the Human Genome Project published the final chromosome sequence, completing a landmark effort to map the full genetic blueprint of the human species.