The twelve months of 1906 was probably most notable because of the number and severity of natural catastrophes. Upon January 31 there was the 8.8 magnitude earth quake mostly impacting Colombia and Ecuador that also generated a tsunami that reached as far as the Hawaiian islands and precipitated more than 500 fatalities. On the 5th of April Mount Vesuvius erupted, damaging Naples and killing more than 100 individuals. The volume of lava ejected was by far the most actually documented from a Vesuvian eruption. Within Italy they were being prepared for the 1908 Olympics when the explosion occurred and resources had to be redirected from the Olympics to rebuilding Naples, along with a new site for the Olympics needed to be found. On April 18 a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas Fault ruined a big part of San Francisco, Ca. Right after the earthquake, fires quickly started in San Francisco and went on for many days. Around 3000 people died and over eighty percent of the city had been ruined. This natural disaster is just about the worst and deadliest earthquakes within the history of the USA. This death toll has been the highest loss of life from a natural disaster throughout California. An explosion in a coal mine on March 10 in Courrières, France resulted in the death of 1060 miners. In August a magnitude 8.2 quake in Valparaíso, Chile leaves around 20000 injured. On September 18, a hurricane which includes a tsunami resulted in the death of around ten thousand in Hong Kong. A magnitude 7.9 earth quake in Xinjiang, China wipes out nearly 300 people on December 22.

Other significant situations in 1906 was that Theodore Roosevelt will be the 26th President of the USA. He was president from 1901 to 1909. On February 7, the Royal Navy’s ship, the HMS Dreadnought was launched. This sets off a naval contest among Britain and Germany keen for naval supremacy with the initial Imperial German Navy submarine, the U-1 becoming launched on August 4. The world’s largest sized ship at the time, the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania is unveiled in Glasgow on June 7. The very first Grand Prix took place about closed public streets outside of the town of Le Mans, France in June. The area is renowned today for the 24 Hours of Le Mans car race which takes place yearly. On September 30th the initial Gordon Bennett Cup in ballooning takes place from Paris to Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. This competition remains to be organised each year. In October, there is a diplomatic dilemma between the United States and the Japanese when the San Francisco public school board directs that Japanese students to be educated in racially split schools. In December, the Greater London Underground’s Great Northern, Piccadilly and also Brompton Railway tracks are opened. The morse code for the SOS becomes an international distress signal on November 3 1906. The famous brand name, Xerox is launched in Rochester, NY as the Haloid Photographic Company. A notable healthcare happening in 1906 could be that the BCG vaccine to protect from tuberculosis was first formulated but hasn't been made use of clinically until 1921. The vaccine proved to be quite effective and it is given to babies as a single dosage and it has appreciably lowered the rates of tuberculosis globally.