A hot air balloon flies close to the ground in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel during an international hot air balloon festival October 14, 2014. (Photo by Nir Elias/Reuters)

A country music fan cools off in the wind on the second day of the Stagecoach country music festival in Indio, California April 26, 2014. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

A performer presents a creation from the Haute Coiffure Fall-Winter 2014/15 collection by French designer Charlie Le Mindu during the Paris Fashion Week, in Paris, France, July 7, 2014. The presentation of the Haute Couture collections runs from 06 to 10 July. (Photo by Etienne Laurent/EPA)

A hairdressing mannequin is seen outside a hair salon amid as Typhoon Matmo hits Nantong, Jiangsu province July 25, 2014. Matmo, which made landfall in Fujian Province on Wednesday, has brought strong winds and heavy downpours to more areas in China after it moved northward on Thursday, Xinhua News Agency reported. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A boy holds his mother's leg as he cries in front of their damaged house after a strong 6.6 magnitude earthquake at Longmen village, Lushan county in Ya'an, Sichuan province. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

Sri Lankan military personnel march during the country's 66th Independence Day celebrations in the central town of Kegalle, about 40 kms from the capital Colombo on February 4, 2014. Sri Lanka cemmemorates its independence from British rule on February 4, 1948. (Photo by Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP Photo)

A girl performs martial arts during a function to mark International Women's Day at a school in Hyderabad, India, on March 7, 2014. (Photo by Mahesh Kumar A./Associated Press)

“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)