Forty years ago the celebrations began for the U.S. bicentennial in 1976. President Ford spoke from the historic Old North Church in Boston from where a steeple lantern triggered Paul Revere's midnight ride two hundred years earlier. The following day nearly 200,000 people came to Lexington and Concord for the anniversary celebrations and reenactments.

The following day President Ford said that the U.S. was exploring a ceasefire in Vietnam that would permit an orderly evacuation of Americans and some South Vietnamese. Although, he was quoted in a television interview that "at the moment," that ceasefire "does not seem possible.

Ten years later, Coca-Cola announced that it was changing its 99 year old secret flavor formula for Coke. Number two Pepsico immediately claimed that the change proved that Pepsi tastes better than Coke, and said that its employees would get a day off to celebrate.

These are some of the headlines you'll see from Page 1 of The Republican and its predecessors over the past fifty years for the week of Apr. 19 - Apr. 25. Each week I'll put together a slideshow of Page 1 images from selected years over the course of that week. We're starting with a look back at one, five, thirty, forty and fifty years ago, with Page 1s from each day of the week for those years.

The slideshow for Apr. 19 - Apr. 25 is embedded at the top of this article.

Five years ago this week, a volcanic eruption in Iceland cancelled and delayed flights all across Europe due to the ash clouds. Caught in the transportation nightmare was a group of twelve students from Holyoke Catholic High School. Their trip to Paris, France was ended by a layover in Iceland. A layover that ended up being 84 hours long.

And a year ago, Berkshire Health Systems reached an agreement to purchase the former North Adams Regional Hospital. The North Adams facility had abruptly closed on March 28.

You'll find with looking through the slideshow, that while many stories come and go, many of the issues and topics that affected lives in the past, continue to have an impact on our lives today.

Copies of these and other stories can be found in the online archives. Links to the archives are at the bottom of the page at www.masslive.com/republican

The historic archive includes stories prior to 1989, and the Newsbank archive covers 1988 through the present day.

