Barbaric behaviour has happened way before 66 years ago. At the risk of breaking Godwins Law (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_Law) there've been MANY examples of such behaviour in the past (i.e. gassing Jews).
When my dad was younger someone killed his dog by drowning it in a river, for example - it's happened throughout time.
I was reading Catherine Cookson a few weeks ago and the book was from around 1910, there was descriptions of barbaric behaviour (including killing animals) from there too.
It's closed-minded of you to say outright there was low barbaric behaviour "back then".