Franklins

Pete Davidson dropped his third hourlong stand-up special (and second for Netflix) in the early hours of Jan. 9. Titled Pete Davidson: Turbo Fonzarelli, it’s far and away his most confident, assured, and hilarious one yet, featuring rapid-fire jokes about everything from a Make-A-Wish scenario gone awry and navigating his stalker to a confusing childhood crush on Titanic-era Leonardo DiCaprio. Early on in the special, directed by Jason Orley in stark black and white, the former Saturday Night Live cast member…

A judge awarded Aretha Franklin‘s sons the singer’s real estate after reviewing a handwritten 2014 will that was found between couch cushions, Associated Press reports. The new decision comes four months after a jury decided that the document was valid despite being hard to read. The will was signed with the letter “A” and a smiley face. The handwritten document overrides a will from 2010 that was found in 2019. The decision was a major victory for Franklin’s youngest son, Kecalf, who had been arguing in…

Khachatur Manukyan and his team employed cutting-edge spectroscopic and imaging instruments to get a closer look than ever at the inks, paper and fibers that made Benjamin Franklin’s bills distinctive and hard to replicate. Credit: University of Notre Dame Benjamin Franklin may be best known as the creator of bifocals and the lightning rod, but a group of University of Notre Dame researchers suggest he should also be known for…

A Michigan jury decided Tuesday that a handwritten will found between couch cushions in Aretha Franklin’s home after her death in 2018 is valid, according to reports. The soul music legend had left behind two handwritten wills that were found inside her Detroit home after her death from pancreatic cancer at age 76. The wills disagreed on which family members would control her estate, estimated at more than $80 million, prompting turmoil among Franklin’s children. A legal battle amounted to a trial at an Oakland County…

A jury is to determine which of two handwritten wills found at Aretha Franklin’s home in Detroit, Michigan, is the late musician’s valid last testament, as disputed by her sons.One was found in a cabinet, dated June 2010, which Ted White II, Franklin’s third son, claims is her true will and lists him as co-executor. Kecalf Franklin and Edward Franklin, her second and fourth sons, say a will discovered in a spiral notebook under a cushion, dated March 2014, is in fact the primary will. In the latter, Kecalf is the…

When Aretha Franklin died in 2018 at 76 of pancreatic cancer, she left behind a genre-defining legacy and an estate worth an estimated $80 million.It was believed that Franklin had died without a will, meaning that her four sons were expected to evenly share her assets. But several months after her death, the family discovered two handwritten wills at her Detroit home — one found inside a cabinet and another in a notebook, sandwiched beneath cushions.The dueling wills agree on one thing: All four of her sons will share…

The FBI has declassified its file on Aretha Franklin, the late “Queen of Soul” who died in 2018 at age 76. The 270-page document, which includes reports from over a dozen states, shows the bureau extensively tracked the singer’s civil rights activism and her friendships with Martin Luther King Jr and Angela Davis.The file also includes several credible death threats against Franklin and a potential copyright infringement lawsuit stemming from a Yahoo! Groups message board in 2005. The case, involving a self-proclaimed…