Since the shell where I wrote the command is still executing, the .bash_history has no mention of it (bash saves the commands in the history file when it exits). As for the up arrow, it would mean interrupting the commands - and I didn't want to :-)
Good question. Well, when you have forgotten everything about a 10 lines long command line you wrote 6 months ago, you don't know what side effects a signal may cause... You don't have the heart to signal anything, except surrender. Luckily, I found a workaround :-)
While I'm unable to come with this on my own, the article was pretty easy to digest and understand.
It seems that the take-away lesson from the article is that you should save it in a bash script.