“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)

Buyan, a male Siberian brown bear, is given a shower by a zoo employee in his enclosure at the Royev Ruchey zoo in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk June 24, 2014. The Siberian city has been experiencing temperatures of around 30 degrees Celsius over the last week. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

The torrential rain has failed to dampen the spirits of this hyena as he bursts into a hysterical laugh in Kenya, on Oktober 24, 2013. (Photo by Mark Bridger/Solent News & Photo Agency)

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A looter smiles as she runs away from a member of the South African Police Services (SAPS) inside the Lotsoho Mall in Katlehong township, East of Johannesburg, on July 12, 2021. Several shops are damaged and cars burnt in Johannesburg, following a night of violence. Police are on the scene trying to control further protests. It is unclear if this is linked to sporadic protests following the incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma. (Photo by Phill Magakoe/AFP Photo)

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