France Celebrates Joan of Arc's (Fake) Birthday

Celebrations abounded in France today to mark the 600th birthday of Joan of Arc, the fifteenth-century peasant girl who led the French army to victory against the English, was burned at the stake for heresy and witchcraft, and five centuries later was declared a saint.

Looking for a patriotic boost in the presidential election campaign, French President Nicolas Sarkozy delivered a 19 minute praise of the medieval heroine as he visited her native village of Domremy-La-Pucelle.

Although it might prove effective from a political perspective, Sarkozy's commemoration was likely made on the wrong day.

"January 6 was almost certainly not the day of Joan's birth," Nancy Goldstone, the author of the forthcoming book The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc, told Discovery News.

Indeed, there is no record of Joan's date of birth nor her baptism -- after all, individual birthdays were not celebrated in the 15th century....