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The Story of Selfies
Humans have always loved sharing their faces with the world—even before social media or smartphones!
National Gallery of London (Jan van Eyck); Library of Congress (Robert Cornelius)
1- 1400s
Mirrors become cheaper to buy. This makes it easier for artists, like Jan van Eyck, to paint or draw themselves.
2- 1839
Photographer Robert Cornelius becomes the first person to photograph himself. To get the shot, he stands still in front of his camera for several minutes!
3- 1913
The first known mirror selfie is snapped by a 13-year-old Russian princess.
4- 1966
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin takes the first selfie in space.
5- 2002
An Australian man uses the word selfie for the first time. (Soon after, cell phone cameras make taking selfies—and deleting ones you don’t like—easier than ever!)
6- 2011
Instagram user Jennifer Lee posts the first #selfie to the app. There are now more than 460 million photos using that hashtag.
7- 2013
Oxford Dictionaries names selfie the word of the year. Why? Use of the word has increased more than 17,000 percent from 2012!
8- 2022
Today, people pay to visit places like the Museum of Selfies in California. They go just for the chance to snap a selfie in colorful ball pits and in front of other fun backdrops.
Talk about it: In your opinion, why are we so interested in creating images of ourselves? Why are these images so important to us?
