in this talk i will report on progress on the following two questions, the first posed by cassels in 1961 and the second considered by bashmakov in 1974. the first question is whether the elements of the tate-shafarevich group are infinitely divisible when considered as elements of the weil-chatelet group. the second question concerns the intersection of the tate-shafarevich group with the maximal divisible subgroup of the weil-chatelet group. this is joint work with jakob stix.