“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)

“Yucca is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the agave family, Agavaceae. Its 40-50 species are notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitish flowers. They are native to the hot and dry (arid) parts of North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Early reports of the species were confused with the cassava (Manihot esculenta). Consequently, Linnaeus mistakenly derived the generic name from the Carib word for the latter, yuca. It is also colloquially known in the midwest United States as “Ghosts in the graveyard”, as it is commonly found growing in rural graveyards and when in bloom the flowers appear as an apparition floating.” – Wikipedia

Photo: A yucca standing among flowers bursts forth a very large stalk of flowers as a heavy wildflower bloom on June 21, 2005 in the Angeles National Forest northwest of La Canada, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

“Lorenzo Quinn (born May 7, 1966) is an Italian artist and sculptor and the fifth son of the actor Anthony Quinn. By the age of 21 he gained the respect of the New York art community when he was commissioned to make an art work for the United Nations of which a stamp was later made. Quinn was later selected to head the Absolut Vodka ad campaign for which only top international artists are chosen”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Lorenzo Quinn's Vroom Vroom sculpture is installed in its new setting on Park Lane on January 23, 2011 in London, England. The four-metre high sculpture, consists of a vintage Fiat 500, the first car that the sculptor ever bought, grasped by an oversized aluminium child's hand modelled from Quinn's son. The exhibition has previously been displayed in Valencia and Abu Dhabi. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images for Halcyon Gallery)

“The September 11 attacks (called September 11, September 11th or 9/11), were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks against targets in New York City and the Washington, D.C. area on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 terrorists from the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets. The hijackers intentionally crashed two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; both towers collapsed within two hours. Hijackers crashed a third plane into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. When passengers attempted to take control of the fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, it crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, preventing it from reaching its intended target in Washington, D.C. Nearly 3,000 died in the attacks”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A firefighter breaks down after the World Trade Center buildings collapsed September 11, 2001 after two hijacked airplanes slammed into the twin towers in a terrorist attack. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A rose lies on a plastic sheet covering a victim of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 plane which was downed on Thursday near the village of Rozsypne, in the Donetsk region July 18, 2014. International prosecutors investigating the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 say the missile that hit the plane was fired from territory controlled by Russian-backed rebels. They said the missile launcher was brought into Ukraine from Russia. All 298 people on board the Boeing 777 died when it broke apart in midair flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The JIT investigation's findings are meant to prepare the ground for a criminal trial. (Photo by Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

The ferocity of crises worldwide is forcing a record number of people to flee their homes, seeking some form of safety within their own country or across international borders. There are 65.3 million displaced people worldwide, including 21.3 million refugees. Most have lost their homes to armed conflict or natural disasters but other factors, such as extreme poverty and climate change, also drive displacement. The International Organisation for Migration commissioned photojournalist Muse Mohammed to document the plight of the displaced. (Photo by Muse Mohammed/IOM)

Flames quickly grow as firefighters set a backfire on the eastern front of the Park Fire, which has grown to 360,141 acres and is 12 percent contained, on July 28, 2024 near Chico, California. Strong winds and dried vegetation fueled the fire that exploded 70,000 acres in the first 24 hours after a man allegedly pushed a burning car into a ravine to intentionally set the blaze. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)