In this July 12, 2007 file photo, a two-day-old piping plover runs along a beach in the Quonochontaug Conservation Area in Westerly, R.I. (Photo by Steven Senne/AP Photo)

Travellers stop to take a second glance at a model of a giant lady with her head stuck in a photo booth being exhibited in Victoria train station on September 21, 2007 in London, England. (Photo by Cate Gillon/Getty Images)

A child attends a training session in a swimming pool on July 10, 2007 in Wuhan of Hubei Province, China. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

Photographer Lori Nix hand-crafted dioramas are fictional scenes of a post-apocalyptic world in which plants and decay reclaim both grand and mundane structures. Each structure is built in Nix's living room and can take over half a year to build. Photo: Library, 2007. Photographer Lori Nix says this is the most popular image she has made for this project that she calls “The City”. (Photo by Lori Nix)

A man walks past specially designed wash basins in a public toilet at the Foreigners Street on April 26, 2007 in Chongqing Municipality, China. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

Beach goers sunbath inside a new large scale interactive art work by artist Gregor Schneider entitled “Bondi Beach” at Sydneys Bondi Beach on September 28, 2007 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Sergio Dionisio/Getty Images)

“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 sculpture of a swimming man is displayed on the banks of the Thames on September 18, 2007 in London. The new artwork, unveiled today, is to promote a new television programme set in a tattoo parlour. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)