This photograph of Boulevard du Temple in Paris was made in 1838 by Louis Daguerre, the brilliant guy that invented the daguerreotype process of photography. Aside from its distinction of being a super early photograph, it's also the first photograph to ever include a human being. Because the image required an exposure time of over ten minutes, all the people, carriages, and other moving things disappear from the scene. However, in the bottom left hand corner is a man who just so happened to stay somewhat still during the shot — he was having his shoes shined.
It's interesting how sheer luck earned the guy a place in the history of photography. Too bad we'll probably never know his identity.
Saw that somewhere, and I'm wanting to say that there's also a guy sitting on a bench somewhere in the pic, reading a newspaper. Or maybe that was another photo from the same time period. I remember seeing one, from the Chicago waterfront (may have the wrong city), where two kids are visible fishing from a dock, and another of a cityscape where a hooker is leaning on the railing of her balcony. Off to Google I go~~
I thought it was pretty interesting. The main site where it came from has a lot of cool stuff that is either photography or video related. It's in my bookmarks now.