An Irish homeless man nicknamed "Nosy Kelly" may have been England's most prolific serial killer, or a pathological liar. Maybe something in between. Born Kieran Patrick Kelly in Rathdowney, County Laois in 1930. His nickname came from his srón mhór incidentally. Kelly drifted between Dublin and London through his twenties, did a stint in the British Army that ended in a dishonourable discharge for going AWOL, and eventually settled in London for good in the early 1950s. He worked building sites but mostly he drank, slept rough, and moved through the world of London's homeless and forgotten men. It was there, among people nobody was keeping close track of, that Kelly found his opportunity. In 1983, sharing a police cell at Clapham Common with a fellow vagrant named William Boyd, Kelly strangled him with a pair of knotted socks. His stated reason was that Boyd snored too loudly. When police started asking questions, Kelly began confessing to a string of murders stretching back three decades. Kelly claimed to have pushed men under Tube trains at stations like Holloway Road and Parsons Green. He also told vivid stories of other victims he'd stabbed, beaten and poisoned. The numbers kept climbing the longer he talked, eventually reaching over 30! Kelly's own solicitor called him a fantasist. In 1984 he was convicted of Boyd's manslaughter and of the 1975 murder of another homeless man, Hector Fisher. He got life imprisonment and died in HMP Frankland in 2001, having answered in court for exactly two of those thirty claimed deaths. That might have been the end of it, except in 2015 a retired detective named Geoff Platt published a book claiming Kelly was Britain's most prolific killer, with the Home Office allegedly covering it up to avoid panic. It made headlines and got the Metropolitan Police to reopen dozens of cold cases, and it made Kelly briefly infamous as "the London Underground serial killer." Then in 2019 journalist Robert Mulhern published a more sceptical account, having spent years digging through case files and tracking down witnesses. Mulhern found no solid evidence Kelly had ever successfully pushed anyone to their death on the Underground, despite two attempts on fellow vagrants who survived. But Mulhern also uncovered something shocking. Skeletal remains were found in 1993 at Kelly's old family home in Rathdowney, which were never properly identified or fully explained. Buy the Dublin Time Machine a pint and support the DTM Book ko-fi.com/buchanandublintime…

Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) has intrigued people for centuries, with cases reported worldwide, including a few in Ireland. This rare and controversial phenomenon is where a human body seemingly catches fire without an external ignition source. Although the scientific community remains skeptical, attributing such cases to more conventional explanations like the "wick effect" of fat acting as a slow-burning fuel source, a few notable incidents have secured a place in Irish history. The most recent and well documented suspected case of SHC in Ireland occurred in Ballybane, County Galway in December 2010. The victim was 76 year old Michael Faherty, who was found dead in his home. His body was almost entirely burned, yet the room around him showed surprisingly little fire damage. After an extensive investigation, the West Galway coroner, Dr. Ciaran McLoughlin was unable to find any other credible ignition source, such as a cigarette or electrical fault. He made a groundbreaking and highly unusual ruling, officially attributing Faherty’s death to spontaneous human combustion. This verdict was a first for the coroner and garnered significant international attention, sparking both intrigue and skepticism among scientists and the public. Another alleged case is that of Margaret Hogan, an 89 year old widow from Dublin who was found burned to death in her home in 1970. Similar to the Faherty case, investigators found that the fire was highly localised. While there was a small coal fire in the grate, no connection could be established between it and the fatal blaze. Her death was recorded as "death by burning," with the cause of the fire officially listed as "unknown." In 1973, a woman in her 60s from Enniscorthy was found burned almost entirely beyond recognition. As with other alleged SHC cases, the fire was contained to the immediate area around her body, with minimal damage to her surroundings. While this case was never officially ruled as spontaneous human combustion, it has been investigated by those interested in the phenomenon. Buy the Dublin Time Machine a pint and support the DTM Book ko-fi.com/buchanandublintime…

Ever wonder how traffic lights and pedestrian crossings really work? Most pedestrian crossing buttons are just a placebo, in busy urban areas. The light was going to change anyway, because that type of crossing runs on a timed cycle calibrated to traffic flow. But pressing it activates accessibility features that are switched off otherwise like the chirping sound. More interestingly, theres a spinning vibrating yoke on the underside of the box you likely never noticed. That's designed for people who are both deaf and blind. Some crossings use passive detection, infrared or microwave sensors that detect your prescence in the force then change the lights without anyone pressing anything. Quieter junctions wouldn't have an automatic cycle and the button genuinely works at them crossings. But even then the system adds a deliberate delay to protect traffic flow, and the button only registers during certain hours. So if you press it at 3am the light might change in seconds. If it's 8am you're queuing behind every bus and work commuter the algorithm has already accounted for. Traffic lights without pedestrian crossings aren't usually running on fixed timers. The lights are reactive, and the mechanism is typically buried in the road surface itself. Inductive loops are coils of wire embedded in the asphalt at junctions, visible to nosy weirdos like me as rectangular or diamond shaped cuts in the road. When a large enough bit of metal stops over one, it disturbs the magnetic field and registers a vehicle is waiting. It's not a circuit, because the tyres would break that. It's a field disruption. A car that stops too far back from the stop line may never trigger the loop cause the light doesn't know it's there. More modern locations use microwave or radar sensors mounted on the signal poles themselves, capable of detecting moving vehicles, estimating their speed, and feeding that data into broader traffic management systems. These connect to a centralised platform called SCATS. Get your minds out of the gutter. It stands for "Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System" which has managed Dublin's signals since 1989! It now covers over 750 junctions across the Greater Dublin Area. The system manages the aggregate flow of the city. Now we have AI that learns its patterns and compensates for big events or accidents and the slow morning traffic patterns that repeats itself with slight variations on week days. Not all vehicles are equal according to our system though. Buses carry transponders that communicate directly with traffic signals, causing lights to change early or hold green for longer to keep the schedule. Emergency vehicles use an infrared pulse. Small optical sensors on signal heads detect the frequency emitted by an approaching ambulance or fire brigade trying to give a green light before any human has made a decision. Look out next time for the small sensor mounted above the signal housing. Anyway, I find this stuff fascinating. There's loads more to our city most people don't know. Thanks for coming to my little traffic tech Ted Talk 😂 Buy the Dublin Time Machine a pint and support the DTM Book ko-fi.com/buchanandublintime… – at Dublin City, Ireland

The Temple Theatre was more than a nightclub. For a particular generation of Dubliners, it was a rite of passage.Its lifespan was barely seven years. But its legacy as a sacred place for music, dancing, drugs and getting your hole makes it one of the most important spawning grounds of Dublin youth. Long before all that good stuff, St. George’s Church was of the Georgian Northside Dublins great early 19th century Protestant houses of worship. Designed by the architect of the GPO Francis Johnston, the church began construction in 1802 and opened in 1814, he gave it a dramatic triple-tiered spire. But St. George’s was nearly fecked from the start. The dodgy roof was made with badly designed timber trusses and began to fail under its own weight. Luckily Robert Mallet, one of Ireland’s most innovative engineers, designed a series of cast-iron trusses to stabilise it. By the late twentieth century, the church was once again encased in scaffolding. The posh spire needed reinforcement during the 1980s. Protestant attendance on the northside had dwindled by then anyway and St. George’s was deconsecrated. Its bells, made famous by their tolling in Joyces Ulysses, were removed to Taney Parish Church in Dundrum. The aul pulpit took a stranger journey, ending up in Thomas Read’s pub on Parliament Street. In 1991, the building was sold to actor and entrepreneur Sean Simon. On the 9th of September 1996 St. George’s reopened as the Temple Theatre! The neo-classical interior remained with the nave accomodating a congregation with a different vibe. The vaulted basement crypt was refitted with recycled church pews and converted into two bars. The Temple Theatre quickly became Dublin’s premier dance venue, attracting an international roster like Sasha and Digweed, Judge Jules, Mauro Picotto, Scott Bond, Joy Kitikonti, and Lisa Lashes. And then, as with so many great Dublin institutions, it bleedin ended abruptly. The final weekend, over the August bank holiday in 2002, was called "End of an Era". By September 2003, the Temple Theatre had closed its doors. So what about the urban legends of there being bodies buried under the dancefloor? Well when this Church of Ireland site was deconsecrated records indicate that some remains were removed to the consecrated ground of Mount Jerome Cemetery. But Dublin legends say deeper vaults were quickly sealed behind new partitions to accommodate the bars and sound systems. There was a more thourough rennovation in 2004, after the club when the building was purchased by Eugene O’Connor and converted into high-end offices. The building is currently used as private office space for Temple Street Children's Hospital. The "Crypt" where people once danced to trance music is now used for storage, plant machinery, and office infrastructure.