This whole story is built on one wrong assumption: that there are some clear rules defining calendar shifts. As the author discovers at the end this history differs in different countries, and what dates exist is not anymore easy to tell universally. But now let's recall countries are not the same anymore, so even ncal's admirably nerdy attempt to be precise is just a rough approximation. Then how about a Catholic town in a Protestant country, or vice versa? How about people using several calendars simultaneously for different purposes? The truth is there's no clear recipe for every case, and for ≈99.9999% cases proleptic Gregorian (which doesn't care) is completely fine.