Know About the Town of Bent Necks? | #256
+ when Will Smith played Krishna & Matt Damon played Arjuna 😲
Friends,
It has finally happened.
To the surprise of absolutely no one - Donald Trump and Elon Musk broke up.
Their back and forth feud on social media erased $152B from Tesla’s market share overnight. While we’re loathe to give more bandwidth to this constant circus, we’re going to use this as inspiration to look at historical breakups that had massive downstream impact.
Things we learnt this week 🤓
Perhaps no breakup in history has had more far-reaching consequences than Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon in the 1530s. When the Pope refused to annul their marriage, Henry's determination to remarry led him to break from the Catholic Church entirely, establishing the Church of England and fundamentally altering the religious landscape of Europe. This personal marital crisis triggered the English Reformation, reshaped international relations, and established precedents for royal authority over religious matters that persist today. The divorce not only enabled Henry's subsequent five marriages but also set the stage for the eventual rise of Elizabeth I, whose reign would define England's golden age - so much so that Shekar Kapur decided to make 2 movies about it. Henry VIII? Nah I preferred his earlier work.
Anna Mae Bullock was an extremely talented singer who joined Ike and formed a band called Ike & Tina Turner. Ike had a plan to have a revolving set of singers whom he would call Tina Turner and trademarked the name in 1960 - basically a new Tina Turner like a new Doctor Who every few years. Ike and Anna fell in love and got married. It wasn’t a happy marriage as Ike was abusive and controlling. Eventually they separated and Anne relinquished all financial assets ($500k in debts, royalties, and real estate) in exchange for one thing - retaining her stage name Tina Turner. The abuse Tina endured—third-degree burns from coffee, broken jaws, and psychological torment—left lasting trauma, yet her post-divorce comeback with Private Dancer (1984) redefined aging women’s roles in rock. The $50 million grossing Tina: The Musical (2019) cemented her legacy as a survivor-icon, contrasting sharply with Ike’s 2007 death in cocaine-addled obscurity. What’s love got to do with trademark law?
Adolf "Adi" Dassler and Rudolf "Rudi" Dassler were cobblers who crafted athletic footwear from their mother’s laundry room in Herzogenaurach, Germany. Their innovation peaked when Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics wearing their spiked shoes, catapulting the Dassler brand onto the global stage. Then WW2 happened - Rudi’s conscription and brief imprisonment by Allied forces bred suspicion that Adi had orchestrated his arrest. By 1948, the siblings split the company: Adi founded Adidas (Adi + Dassler), and Rudi launched Puma, dividing their hometown across the Aurach River. Herzogenaurach became the "town of bent necks," where residents checked shoes before socializing—Adidas loyalists on one side, Puma devotees on the other.
In 1970, both companies secretly agreed to avoid a bidding war for Pelé, the era’s greatest footballer, under the "Pelé Pact". But Rudi’s Puma breached the deal, paying Pelé $120,000 (≈$1M today) to tie his Puma Kings mid-pitch during the World Cup quarterfinals—a stunt immortalized by a paid cameraman zooming in on his laces. On Sep 21, 2009, on International Peace Day the town of Herzogenaurach saw a symbolic football match take place to indicate that the 2 warring factions had decided to bury their hatchet. In fact Adidas and Puma created a football kit in black and white that sported Adidas' three stripes logo as well as Puma’s leaping cat. Turns out they arrived at this idea after some sole searching.
From IWTK, with love 💌
Diljit Dosanjh lost a fortune for his love of Peaky Blinders. Know more here.
Will Smith played Krishna and Matt Damon played Arjuna.. What?!
Only In India 🇮🇳
This moment would have been perfect if the candidate proclaimed “The Eagle has landed”
💟 IWTK