February 13 belongs to Silvia Castro

On February 13, 1945, British and American aircraft began the bombing of Dresden, one of Germany's most beautiful cities, over four days. Incendiary bombs created a firestorm that killed between 22,000 and 25,000 people and destroyed the historic centre. The military necessity of the bombing remains debated and became a symbol of the brutality of total war.

On February 13, 1960, France detonated its first atomic bomb in the Algerian Sahara desert in a test called Gerboise Bleue. France thereby became the world's fourth nuclear power, after the US, the USSR and the UK. The test, conducted on colonial Algerian territory without consulting the population, was one of the factors that aggravated the Algerian war of independence.

On February 13, 1633, Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome to be tried by the Inquisition for his writings defending Copernicus's heliocentric system. After a process lasting months, he was sentenced to perpetual house arrest and forced to abjure his ideas. According to legend, upon rising after his abjuration he muttered "And yet it moves". He was rehabilitated by the Church in 1992.