> What GR did was reconcile the lack of evidence for
> earth's *assumed* orbital velocity with the lack of
> evidence thereof.
Huh? Newton's old equations work just fine to explain earth's orbital velocity. In fact, they work just fine for the orbits of all the planets. The only thing they couldn't adequately explain was the precession of Mercury's orbit.
You are confused between the calculated prediction of a model and the lack of experimental evidence to support it.