The article is interesting, but the tone and the clickbaity title grate on my nerves.

Newton no more "failed" than the first caveman who discovered fire "failed" because we later invented the Bic lighter. Newton is the giant on whose shoulders Einstein stood to define his theory of general relativity. Newton didn't "lose" when Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted with success the precession of Mercury's orbit. It's the nature of science that later models refine the earlier ones. Not only that, but if a new theory doesn't at least predict as accurately as the older theory, then Occam's Razor tells us to reject it!

To go one step further: if Newton or one of his peers had come up with the theory of general relativity at the same time as Newton's Law of Gravity, Occam's Razor would have meant they would have set it aside because there was no way on Earth they could test this more complex theory at the time.

tl;dr: Cool article, shitty title. Newton wasn't wrong, he was just less right than Einstein.