Dancers disguised as forest spirits pose before performing during the Kendalisada Art Festival 2023 in Kaliori, Banyumas, Central Java, on September 9, 2023. (Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP Photo)

A Samoyed is groomed before being judged on the final day of the Crufts dog show at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, central England, on March 9, 2025. (Photo by Oli Scarff/AFP Photo)

A member of the mainly Christian “anti-balaka” (anti-machete) militia trains in the Boeing neighbourhood of Bangui, Central African Republic, on February 24, 2014. (Photo by Fred Dufour/AFP Photo)

Musher Michael Ruopp of Germany starts with his sled dogs at the 23rd International Sled Dog Race in Oberhof, central Germany, Sunday, February 24, 2013. (Photo by Jens Meyer/AP Photo)

Revellers take part in a Zombie Walk in Asbury Park, New Jersey October 4, 2014. Thousands of revellers met in Asbury park to attempt to break the Guinness World Record of the largest zombie gathering in the world and raise awareness for brain cancer. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

Children play on top of a cargo ship that was swept during the onslaught of Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban city in central Philippines November 2, 2015, ahead of the second anniversary of a devastating typhoon that killed more than 6,000 people in central Philippines. The front part of the ship was retained in the area and made into a memorial and will be inaugurated on November 8 to commemorate the second anniversary of Typhoon Haiyan. (Photo by Erik De Castro/Reuters)

Militants loyal to Yemen's exiled government ride on the back of a pick-up truck in the country's central city of Taiz August 19, 2015. Militia forces loyal to Yemen's exiled government fought their way deep into the central city of Taiz this week, local officials said, largely pushing out Houthi militiamen from the country's third largest city. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

“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)