What was the first altcoin? I'm aware that LiteCoin is (was?) the "silver" to bitcoin's "gold". 

The question is:


  What was the first altcoin? Was it actually LiteCoin or was there something else?


For the purposes of "alt coin"


What was the first fork of bitcoin
What was the first altcoin that more than, say, 10 people mined?
Litecoin was not the first altcoin. It actually uses ideas for altcoins that precede it but had died before it was created. This is mentioned in its announcement thread on bitcointalk.. The very first altcoin was actually Namecoin, announced in April 2011. Namecoin was actively used and mined, and can still be used today.