One thing I didn't know about the olden days is that they were apparently full of unspeakable terrors. The old style of the photograph makes this looks even scarier and more disturbing than it already is, but I'm pretty sure if I saw something like this coming toward me, I'd be freaked out. It doesn't matter what year it is. It looks to be a mosquito riding a bicycle. Mosquitos are one of the worst flying bugs, which is saying a lot since there are so many bad ones to choose from.
I guess people were always doing weird things for all of recorded history. We could take a million guesses as to what this person was doing, but we'd probably be wrong with every single one of them. My favorite guess is that he was a superhero.