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It wasn't about bending of light though. The orbit of Mercury is slightly different from what Newton's theory would predict, and this was first observed during the eclipse.

The British officer story happened in Korea IIRC, the custom at the time wasn't cannibalism, but that women who lost their husbands would be killed to join them in the afterlife.

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The GP is correct that Eddington's observations during the 1919 eclipse had to do with the deflection of starlight. General relativity predicted that starlight passing by the Sun would be deflected by a certain amount, and Eddington's observations showed that general relativity's prediction was correct.

The discrepancy between Mercury's perihelion precession and Newtonian gravity had been observed long before Einstein developed general relativity. Calculations under general relativity correctly determined Mercury's perihelion advance, but general relativity did not predict the perihelion advance, since it was already known.

You're right, seems like I misremembered this fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perihelion_precession_of_Mercu...

I think it was India, actually, but the rest sounds correct.

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