It's not easy being Elon Musk. All he wants to do is build rockets, drive electric cars, save humanity from runaway artificial intelligence, smoke weed on live TV, accuse heroic Thai cave rescuers of paedophilia and generally tweet whatever he feels like without any consequences.

But the world just keeps trying to drag him down. Already facing a defamation lawsuit from the aforementioned caving expert, he is now being sued by American financial regulators for a string of tweets he made in August.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says Mr Musk disrupted the stock market with “false and misleading statements” when he promised he had a secured funding from a mystery party to take his electric car company, Tesla, private.

That plan never materialised, but a 23-page SEC docket filed in the Southern District Court of New York did. Here are the five most surprising claims it contains.

Elon Musk’s share price was inspired by weed

When Mr Musk tweeted that Tesla would go private at $420 per share, eyebrows were raised among those with a passing knowledge of marijuana culture.

The number “420” is a drug meme, with April 20 – “4/20” in the American date format – serving as international pot-smoking day for stoners worldwide.