Inktober Week 1: Down the Rabbit Hole

Four prompts, four faces, and four stories I definitely didn't see coming.

From Macintosh mysteries to a shroud with a questionable reputation, tiny crime scenes, and a cactus with a past, Week 1 proved that the obvious answer is rarely the most interesting one.

Four colors, four portraits, and already too many tabs open in my browser.

4 down. 27 to go. Send help.

• Day 1 Apple: Jef Raskin, the man who named the Macintosh after his favourite apple.

• Day 2 Relic: Secondo Pia, the photographer whose controversial image of the Shroud of Turin changed the debate around the mysterious relic.

• Day 3 Miniature: Frances Glessner Lee, the woman who turned tiny crime scenes into tools for solving real murders.

• Day 4 Cactus: Arthur D. Houghton, a doctor, politician, war veteran, and cactus enthusiast who refused to stick to just one career.

Inktober Week 2: Things Got Weird!

This week went from a literary giant with dodgy eyesight to a man who made a living farting on stage. And somehow, we ended up with computer memory, secret paintings, and jars buried under an apple tree.

Seven prompts, seven unexpected faces, and several Wikipedia rabbit holes later, I'm beginning to suspect these prompts are conspiring against me.

11 down. 20 to go. Send more coffee.

• Day 5 Smack: Shin Kubota, a marine biologist who became famous for his research on the so-called immortal jellyfish and an unexpected musical alter ego.

• Day 6 Ogre: Aldous Huxley, the near-blind teenager who became a visionary writer exploring two very different kinds of dystopia.

• Day 7 Panic: Orson Welles, whose infamous War of the Worlds broadcast sparked a media legend about mass panic that was far more complicated than the headlines suggested.

• Day 8 Stinky: Joseph Pujol, the legendary flatulist whose unusual talent made him a sensation in Parisian entertainment.

• Day 9 Ram: Robert Dennard, the engineer whose invention of dynamic RAM helped make modern computing possible.

• Day 10 Mystical: Hilma af Klint, the Swedish artist whose abstract paintings predated some of the art world's most celebrated pioneers.

• Day 11 Rescue: Irena Sendler, the Polish social worker who helped rescue Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto and preserved their identities in hidden jars.

Inktober Week 3: The Plot Thickens!

This week featured a coin toss that changed aviation history, fairy photos that fooled even Sherlock Holmes, and a wellness guru whose inventions belonged in a horror movie. We also met a cheerleader who started a tradition, a stop-motion mastermind, and a birdless story that took an unexpected turn.

Seven prompts, seven rabbit holes, and my browser tabs are staging a coup.

18 down. 13 to go. Send reinforcements.

• Day 12 Toss: Wilbur Wright, whose coin toss with his brother Orville decided who would attempt the first powered flight.

• Day 13 Flimsy: Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes who fell for photographs of supposedly real fairies.

• Day 14 Lady: Barry Humphries, the comedian who transformed a sharp-tongued suburban housewife into the iconic Dame Edna Everage.

• Day 15 Hooray: Johnny Campbell, the football fan whose spontaneous celebration helped inspire a tradition sung by crowds around the world.

• Day 16 Gangly: Henry Selick, the stop-motion filmmaker who brought wonderfully peculiar characters to life, one painstaking frame at a time.

• Day 17 Contraption: John Harvey Kellogg, the health reformer whose eccentric inventions included machines that sound more like props from a horror film than medical equipment.

• Day 18 Flightless: Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer and performer who spent decades bringing Big Bird, television's most famous oversized yellow bird, to life.

Inktober Week 4: The Stories Get Wilder!

This week, we wandered through a neurologist’s curious case files, lounged with the designers who shaped modern living, and met a Hollywood star whose inventions helped pave the way for Wi-Fi. Then came a forgotten Black inventor, a fashion icon with a secret-agent past, a baker with a family legacy etched in clay, and a woman whose cells changed medicine forever.

Seven prompts. Seven extraordinary lives. And enough untold history to keep me Googling until next October.

25 down. 6 to go. Send a bigger research team.

• Day 19 Confused: Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who explored extraordinary cases of the human brain and challenged how we think about identity and perception.

• Day 20 Lounge: Ray Eames, part of the design duo who turned plywood experiments into some of the most recognisable furniture of the twentieth century.

• Day 21 Hero: Hedy Lamarr, the Hollywood star who co-invented a frequency-hopping system that helped lay the groundwork for technologies used in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

• Day 22 Beacon: Lewis Latimer, the Black inventor whose work helped make electric lighting more practical while history often placed the spotlight elsewhere.

• Day 23 Dapper: Marlene Dietrich, the glamorous screen legend whose connection to the fight against Nazi Germany extended far beyond her on-screen persona.

• Day 24 Bake: Yaba Baker, a descendant of enslaved potter and poet David Drake, whose family helped bring the story of his remarkable stoneware and hidden poetry into the spotlight.

• Day 25 Fracture: Henrietta Lacks, the woman whose cells transformed medical research, raising enduring questions about consent, ownership, and who benefits from scientific breakthroughs.

Inktober Week 5: Zero Boring Stories!

This final week took us from the campaign to get Americans using five-digit ZIP Codes to a magazine editor who wrote a book using nothing but his left eyelid. We met Pickles, the dog who sniffed out the stolen 1966 World Cup, followed elephant DNA from dung samples to international ivory trafficking networks, and discovered how a tiny browser cookie made online shopping carts possible. We wrapped up with Misty Copeland, who challenged ballet's narrow ideas of what a prima ballerina should look like and made history at the American Ballet Theatre.

Six prompts. Six remarkable stories. From postal history to browser history, stolen trophies to stolen futures, and a ballerina who refused to fit the mould.

31 down. 0 to go. Send coffee. Lots of coffee.

• Day 26 Zip: D. Jamison Cain, the postal official who had to convince Americans that being reduced to five digits was a good idea. Enter Mr. ZIP, the cartoon mascot recruited to win the public over.

• Day 27 Dumb: Jean-Dominique Bauby, the Elle editor who, after being paralysed by locked-in syndrome, wrote an entire memoir by blinking one eye.

• Day 28 Trophy: David Corbett and Pickles, the man and dog who stumbled upon a newspaper-wrapped parcel and helped solve one of football's most famous mysteries: the disappearance of the World Cup.

• Day 29 Tusk: Sam Wasser, the conservation scientist using elephant DNA to trace confiscated ivory back to its source and expose the hidden networks behind the illegal ivory trade.

• Day 30 Cookie: Lou Montulli, the internet pioneer who gave browsers a way to remember us. The little invention behind shopping carts, login sessions, and a rather complicated relationship with online privacy.

• Day 31 Flex: Misty Copeland, the ballerina who challenged ballet's rigid expectations of what a dancer's body should look like and broke barriers in a world that wasn't always ready for her.