A Look Back, May 12

50 Years Ago

■To mark its 100th birthday, Smith College will present Northampton with 100 trees over the next 10 years. The Centennial gift has been announced by Thomas C. Mendenhall, president of Smith. The trees, which will come, for the most part, from Smith’s own nurseries, will be planted along city streets that run through and around the campus.

■Miss Nora M. Clifford, longtime teacher at Northampton High School, died Sunday at age 75. A graduate of St. Michael’s High School and Salem State Teachers College, she later attended Springfield College and Smith College. For many years she taught in the business department of Northampton High School, retiring in June 1970.

25 Years Ago

■After weeks of finetuning, the Northampton School Committee settled on a statement Thursday that calls on the state not to rely on the MCAS test alone when judging student learning. The measure appears to put Northampton at the lead among communities across the state that are raising objections to the controversial test.

■Northampton officials will spend the next month meeting with people to refine a zoning ordinance that would regulate the arrival of large-scale retailers. A standing-room-only crowd of merchants and residents turned out Thursday to discuss proposed zoning regulations on “big box” developments at a joint hearing of the Planning Board and the City Council Ordinance Committee.

10 Years Ago

■Tara Brewster of Easthampton has joined the Vann Group of Springfield as a business adviser. Brewster is the former co-owner of Jackson & Connor, a high-end men’s fashion store in Northampton.

■Amherst’s last video rental store, one of just a handful of such brick-and-mortar enterprises still in existence throughout New England, has closed. Captain Video owner Nolan Anaya announced Monday that he is preparing for a public sale of the store’s collection of 27,000 DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and even VHS tapes.