Hey all, let me start at the beginning. 
One day in happy land I decided to stop being lazy and fix the  intonation on my low E string. I was told to loosen the screw if the  fretted notes were too sharp so I did that. 
Kept doing it and doing it and doing it... intonation's not fixed, but  now the screw is jammed diagonally as it came out and I can't get it  back in. 
I decided to loosen the string by a lot to see if I could push down to get the screw straight. 
 
Turns out it didn't work, it was really jammed. So I began getting the  string back to regular pitch (I loosened it to the point of removal)...  and it snapped around the tuner while I was turning the knob before I  could reach E. 
 
The end coming out of the hole is not matching where the string snapped.  The end in question is behind the tuner peg (still wound around, took  some effort to get that spiraled string out). 
My question is, why did this happen? This is a cheap guitar, First Act,  but I replaced the strings 4-5 months ago with Super Slinkies from here http://www.ernieball.com/products/category-916-Nickel-Wound#.