Best May anniversary

1: CAPTAIN KIDD

The Dundee Kidd, resident of New York, was found guilty of murder and piracy on 8 May, 1701, and sent, reeling drunk, to the gallows. His trial was grossly unfair, his black reputation largely undeserved. He was a privateer, licensed by the Crown to operate against pirates plaguing the East India trade. After his crew mutinied, he did a deal with pirate captain Robert Culliford. His buried treasure, recovered from Long Island, went to the new Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich.

2: FIRST OVERDRAFT

On 3 May, 1828, William Hogg, a merchant in Edinburgh, went to the manager at the recently founded Royal Bank of Scotland, in Ship Close, with a problem. In his business of buying and selling, he sometimes needed money to balance the books, but he didn't want to pay for a fixed-term loan. So the manager said he could spend up to £1,000 (£66,000 today) more than he had in his account. RBS had invented the overdraft.

3: LOCH NESS MONSTER

The Inverness Courier on 2 May, 1933 reported a couple seeing "an enormous animal rolling and plunging, its body resembling that of a whale, and the water cascading and churning". And so began the modern monster mania. Since then, Nessiteras rhombopteryx has proved camera-phobic, and with scales resistant to all monster-location devices.

4: GLASGOW EXHIBITION

On 2 May, 1901, the Second International Exhibition opened in Kelvingrove Park to promote trade and industry. Crowds flocked to see the Patent Self-Closing Armoured Fire Door, and the American "March King" John Philip Sousa conducting his band. A legacy of the exhibition was Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

5: ROYAL AND ANCIENT

The St Andrews Society of Golfers was instituted on 14 May, 1754, by 22 "Noblemen and Gentlemen of the Kingdom of Fife, being admired of the Ancient and healthful exercise of the Golf". It adopted the rules laid down by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, founded in 1744, and became the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in 1834.