13 Feb 2012 - Bombing of Dresden

Today I learned about the bombing of Dresden, but additionally that some coincidences are spooky! I was speaking to some work colleagues this morning and somehow we got onto the topic of the bombing of Dresden during  world war two, and how many people died during the raid. My work colleague was unsure of the exact figures, but I did some research when I got home and Dresden is a town in Germany about 160 kilometres south of Berlin. During world war two this town had over 2500 tons of high explosives dumped on it in a single night, almost 90 percent of the inner city's 28,000 homes were destroyed, as well as 22 hospitals. At the time the Nazi's published that as many as 250,000 people died, modern estimates refute this and put the figure at around 135,00 deaths from the raid. I always try to keep in mind that it is the victors who write the histories and so try not to dismiss a claim from someone just because I may happen to disagree with their regime. However, regardless of whether the Nazi's inflated the figure or not, to put this bombing in perspective, the bombing of Hiroshima, of which much is publicised, killed 70,000 people, basically half, of the lowest estimate of those killed in the bombing of Dresden, and yet until today I had never even heard of this historic event, despite having researched a great deal about world war two.

Not knowing about this terrible event shocked me a little, but what surprised me more, was that upon hearing about this at work I then came home, and I glanced at a book that I have in my book shelf. I thought to myself, why have I never read this book, it is called 365 and contains historical stories for each day of the year, it would have provided me with great ideas of things to learn and blog about, but I haven't even picked it up since I started blogging! So I decided to take a quick peak and turned to the page for the 13th of Feb. You will never guess what happened on the night of the 13th of Feb 1945, or perhaps you might because I have really given it away already! You guessed it, the bombing of Dresden occurred on 13th of Feb 1945! I was a little spooked, what are the chances that I will be told about a battle for the first time on the date that it had actually occurred. My second thought was that maybe he knew that it had occurred on this day and that is why it was on his mind, but when I checked with him the next day, he had no idea exactly when it had occurred just that it was sometime during world war two. This event is going in the spooky fact file, along with the time when I dreamed that I was doing my washing, and when I pulled it out of the machine, a white sock was wrapped around the leg of my jeans, only to wake up and and recall that I had washing in the machine, and when I pulled it out, there was a white sock wrapped around the leg of my jeans. These two spooky events are the the stuff of legends!