The law for people born on leap days

[CalMeacham]

German physicist, art commentator, and irrepressible punster George Christoph Lichtenburg (1742-1799) pointed out, you can determine the birthday of even a person born on Leap Day if you go by astronomical dating:

I wouldn’t even have touched upon this ridiculous topic if the question When shall a person born on February 29 celebrate his birthday? had not been raised rather seriously in a famous magazine and left unanswered. Here is the answer and the consolation:
To be sure, a man is born on a certain day, at a certain date; but his entry into the world, his first drawing breath, is the work of a single second. At this point in time, the sun stands at a certain point of its ecliptic. Therefore a given individual will be exactly one year old the next time the sun stands again in this same point; and the legal day which contains that instant is the person’s birthday in the true sense, whatever the calendar calls it. This, I think is very clear. Put it in the style of a recipe or a set of instructions, it would run somewhat like this:
1) Have someone tell you the second, minute, and hour of your birth, or if unknown, assume some definite time: for instance, mid-day. 2) Look up the longitude of the sun for this instant in an astronomical calendar. 3) Look up in the calendar for the year in which you intend to celebrate your birthday, the day when the sun will have exactly the same longitude. This day, whatever it is, is your birthday.
If you proceed in this way, you will notice something which will amaze you: if you had been born on any other day — for instance, May 1 — you would nevertheless, under certain conditions, celebrate your birthday on different days, at times on April 30, at times on May 2. Therefore the man born on February 29 isn’t always the only one who has to celebrate on different days of the month from the one which the usual method assigns him. Often one rejoices jubilantly at the death of the old year when it still has eighteen more hours to languish, and congratulates the new one eighteen hours before it is born. So in this case, as in thousands of other happenings of life, it’s a matter of situation and circumstances.
~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799), “Consolations For The Unfortunates Born On The 29th Of February,” translated by Franz H. Mautner & Henry Hatfield

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