A Look Back, Oct. 4

50 Years Ago

■Smith College was the setting last night for the first performance in a national tour of Agnes de Mille’s newest venture, the Heritage Dance Theatre. Before a sell-out audience at the Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts, Miss de Mille’s troupe of 25 male and female dancers appeared as part of Smith’s Centennial celebration.

■The Hampshire County Commissioners last night reaffirmed their original decision to sell one and a third acres near Damon Road to the American Legion for $1. In addition, the commission announced plans to donate additional county land in Goshen to the Camp Howe Corp.

25 Years Ago

■The Northampton Teachers Association will recognize five people the union believes support education initiatives. The honorees include Mayor Mary L. Ford, School Committee member James Dostal, City Councilor Michael Bardsley, assistant principal of Northampton High School Frank Tudryn, and Florence resident Mary Jo Nagle.

■Historic Northampton will officially open its new museum complex on Columbus Day weekend. Positioned at the gateway to downtown Northampton, the new facility includes a historical museum and four historic buildings all set in a newly landscaped campus.

10 Years Ago

■Robert A. Rothstein, professor of Judaic and Slavic Studies and comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has been honored with the Republic of Poland Order of Merit. The Order of Merit is given to foreigners and Polish citizens permanently living abroad who have made contributions to improving relations with Poland.

■Staff at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital have been planning for how to deal with both Ebola and the Middle East Respiratory Symptom (MERS) for about two months, developing protocols for handling anyone who might be in contact with an infected person, says Linda Riley, a registered nurse and manager of infection prevention at the hospital.