A Look Back, Feb. 11

50 Years Ago

■Hampshire County is locked in a deep freeze. A combination of light winds, fresh snow cover and an arctic air mass sent temperatures plummeting last night and early today. A low of 22 degrees below zero was reported at the Mill Valley Grist Mill in Amherst.

■At a meeting in St. Mary’s Church last Friday, the Most Rev. Christopher J. Weldon, Bishop of the Springfield Roman Catholic Diocese dropped a “shocker” in the last five minutes of the meeting. The bishop announced that it might be necessary to close St. Mike’s if the enrollment falls before 200, the number of students at which it is considered economically feasible to maintain a parochial school.

25 Years Ago

■Massachusetts Highway Commissioner Matthew Amorello said today that despite the most recent delays in repairing the Coolidge Bridge, work to add a fourth lane will begin by late summer. “We’re not going to futz around with it. We’re going to get started this summer,” Amorello said today in a phone interview.

■Two months after someone slipped poison into a Springfield law school water cooler and caused seven students to get sick, police have determined that the substance was potassium cyanide. But they still don’t know who was responsible or whether a strange “swastika-like” symbol found nearby is connected to the poisoning.

10 Years Ago

■Snow-choked New England braced for more winter grief later in the week as people dug out from another 2 feet of snow Tuesday amid below-freezing temperatures. About 500 members of the Massachusetts National Guard are being activated to help deal with the aftermath of record-setting snowfall over the past two weeks.

■About two weeks before the holiday lights downtown will be turned off, only seven businesses or individuals have donated to a special fund designed to offset the cost of continuing the program during this season. Mayor David J. Narkewicz set up the fund in November when the city agreed to temporarily take over the program following the dissolution of the Northampton Business Improvement District.