Young Ian Archibald ponders the consequences of a complex critical study of beauty contestants during the Miss TV Times finals in London. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images). 30 July 1971

“Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress. Nicknamed the “Bronze Venus”, the “Black Pearl”, and even the “Créole Goddess” in anglophone nations.

Baker was the first African American female to star in a major motion picture and to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States (she was offered the unofficial leadership of the movement by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, but turned it down), for assisting the French Resistance during World War II and for being the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de guerre”.

Photo: American entertainer Josephine Baker in costume for her famous “banana dance”. Baker was an overnight sensation when she arrived in Paris in the mid-1920s. (Photo by Walery/Getty Images)

A Muslim boy takes part in Friday prayers on a street outside a mosque in Mumbai, India, June 24, 2016. (Photo by Shailesh Andrade/Reuters)

Nurse's Home, North Brother Island, New York. Photographer Christopher Payne specializes in the documentation of America’s vanishing architecture and industrial landscape. His new book, North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City, explores an uninhabited island of ruins in the East River of New York City. (Photo by Christopher Payne)

A driver on the Horseshoe Pass in North Wales wiping the snow from the windscreen of his car during a heavy snow storm, 18th January 1937. (Photo by Norman Smith)

British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) stops to pet a cat at Liverpool Street Station, 24th May 1952. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg (left) and Dr. Friedrich Weber of the Freikorps Oberland (Oberland Free Corps), during the Munich Putsch. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images). 1923

An Israeli soldier prays in front of a tank at a military staging area near the border with the Gaza Strip, in this July 24, 2014 file photo. Israel's long-running struggle to balance modern standards with Jewish tradition has come to a head in the military, where new orders curtailing beards among soldiers have met protests from some rabbis. (Photo by Nir Elias/Reuters)