Just nine days after chartering the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the New York State Legislature passed the first anti-cruelty law and gave the new ASPCA the authority to enforce it.  (By John Osborne) 

Henry Bergh, a wealthy New York diplomat recently returned from Europe, had been speaking publically about animal cruelty in New York, mentioning specifically cockfighting and the treatment of animals in New York slaughterhouses.  On this day, on Bergh's behalf, the New York State Legislature passed the charter of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said to be the oldest humane society in the Western Hemisphere. Bergh would serve twenty years as its first president.  (By John Osborne)  

Henry Bergh, a wealthy New York diplomat recently returned from Europe, sponsored a large meeting of his fellow city elites and gave an empassioned talk about animal cruelty, mentioning specifically cockfighting and the treatment of animals in New York slaughterhouses.  With support, he founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,which the New York Legislature chartered on April 10, 1866.  (By John Osborne)  

Dimitri Karakosov, the son of an impoverished aristocrat and a political radical, shot at Tsar Alexander II as he left the Summer Garden in St. Petersburg.  Nearby workmen foiled his attempt and the shots fired missed their mark. After several later close calls over the next decades, Alexander died at the hands of Nihilist dynamite bombers in March 1881.  (By John Osborne) 

Johanna Mansfield Sullivan Macy, better known as Anne Sullivan, the teacher and companion of Helen Keller, was born of Irish immigrants in Hampden County, Massachusetts.  She contracted an eye ailment as a child and was largely robbed of her sight but, through family difficulties that included time in an orphanage, she was educated at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown.  She then became the teacher of Helen Keller and remained with her until her own death in 1936. (By John Osborne)

Thanks to the metronic cycle, February 1866 ends without having a full moon during the entire month.  This had not happened since 1847 and would not happen again until 1885. (By John Osborne) 

Miners discovered a human skull deep in a mine, beneath an ancient lava flow, in Calaveras County in central California. State geologist J.D. Whitney pronounced it as evidence that humans had inhabited California five million years ago.. Rumors quickly emerged that the skull was from a Native American burial and other miners had planted it as a joke.  Carbon dating in 1992 proved the skull to be only 1000 years old. (By John Osborne)