Just found out Elon Musk's parents are actually British/English, not Afrikaner like most people assume. He literally posted about this on social media back in 2024, saying his background is more similar to J.R.R. Tolkien who was also born in South Africa. Both their families were English settlers, which is pretty different from the Afrikaner culture everyone thinks of when they hear South Africa.

Musk was born in Pretoria in 1971, and apparently he's always been into Tolkien's work - like, really into it. Even cited it when he was dating Grimes. The whole thing made me realize how much context matters when you're trying to understand someone's ethnicity and background. His parents' heritage actually shaped a lot more than I realized, especially growing up in apartheid South Africa as a British family versus an Afrikaner one. Pretty wild how one clarification changes the whole picture of who he is.