A Look Back: April 15

50 Years Ago

■Some 25 members of War Tax Resistance, a group of Amherst and Northampton area residents, were to march on the Internal Revenue Service’s Holyoke office today, protesting the use of income tax revenues to finance military projects and to back the Thieu regime in South Vietnam. This is the third year the informal Amherst-based group has protested military spending of income tax funds.

■The “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” does not ring in many western Massachusetts ears. A check in area towns today showed there was little celebration planned for Patriots’ Day, which commemorates the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.

25 Years Ago

■To meet a call by state officials to improve local air quality, the University of Massachusetts is working to get more of its employees to carpool or take buses to work. The university also will work with other large employers in the area, including Amherst and Smith colleges and Cooley Dickinson Hospital, to encourage similar efforts there.

■Another potential mayoral candidate emerged Tuesday when Bennie Johnson took out nomination papers to run for mayor. Johnson, of the Meadowbrook Apartment complex, must now collect the signatures of 50 registered voters in order to have his name placed on the ballot.

10 Years Ago

■U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the keynote speaker for an annual conference sponsored for 24 years by state Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg, D-Amherst, at the Clarion Hotel and Conference Center in Northampton. This year’s conference drew a bigger crowd than ever, about 240 town and city officials from around the region, compared to 175 who typically take part.

■Projects to spruce up the Bridge Street School playground and build two new playgrounds in the city headline the latest round of Community Preservation Act grants expected to be awarded this spring by the City Council. The playgrounds are among seven projects totaling $806,500 that the Community Preservation Committee agreed to support last week.