to vindicate someone's honor

Every record they ever made was straight-up wack.

The results were that instead of many voters wanting to turn the boat, they were soothed . . . into supporting Gillespie’s message.

The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone, essentially what today we might term a frameless magnifying glass or plain glass paperweight.