50 Years Ago
- Five area young people were arraigned Saturday morning on arson charges stemming from the burning of a police cruiser in the early morning of July 25. The fire had earlier been called an accident. Police said they believe gasoline was poured on the $6,000 cruiser and then ignited as it sat behind the station. The car, purchased this spring, was declared a total loss.
- Peter A. Gutowski, son of Carl and Edith Gutowski of King Street, will travel to Hamburg, West Germany, in September to study music at the Hochschule fuer Musik. Gutowski graduated this spring from the University of Massachusetts, receiving a bachelor of music degree magna cum laude, with concentration in theory and composition.
25 Years Ago
- The group of protesters arrested in a downtown demonstration June 22 say they are willing to go to trial if necessary to fight the charges against them. The nine protesters, members of a group called the Western Massachusetts Resistance Coalition, are charged with disorderly conduct in connection with the incident, in which they laid down in the intersection of Main, Pleasant and King streets, stopping traffic for nearly an hour, to protest the planned execution of Texas death row inmate Gary Graham.
- On Saturday at the Taste of Northampton, radio station WRNX-FM will attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the largest puppet show in history. Two thousand people are expected to participate, the station says.
10 Years Ago
- Champlain Cable Corp. plans to close its factory in Leeds for good by Oct. 31, leaving more than two dozen people without jobs. The Colchester, Vermont, automotive wire and cable manufacturer is in the process of ramping down operations at its factory at 118 River Road and moving the equipment to its facility in El Paso, Texas.
- A five-year legal battle over a widow s bequest of more than $750,000 for use at the closed St. Mary of the Assumption Church will continue while appeals to the Vatican play out, according to a recent probate court ruling. The legal wrangling over the disposition of the money stands at the crossroads of secular and ecclesiastical courts, has lawyers working on two continents, and pits a group of determined Northampton area parishioners against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield.