Photo via: Mashable. Taken in 1838, Louis Daguerre's photograph of a Paris street scene shows a man standing along the Boulevard du Temple getting his shoes shined. It is widely believed to be the earliest extant photograph of human figures.

The first photograph of a human being was taken by Louis Daguerre in late 1838. The image, titled Boulevard du Temple, shows a busy street in Paris. Because the exposure time was around seven to ten minutes, all the moving traffic and pedestrians were too fast to be captured and appeared as a blur or disappeared entirely. However, a man standing on a street corner having his boots polished remained still long enough to be recorded on the silver-plated copper sheet. If you look closely at the bottom-left corner of the famous daguerreotype, you can clearly see the silhouette of the man and the person polishing his shoes, making them the first humans ever photographed.