During the Mexican-American War the US secretly bribed Alaska to sneak up behind Mexico and eat Mexico in one big gulp.

Then the US put Alaska in a box to quarantine it because it started to get sick. This is what you see illustrated on many maps because it was historically a very important moment to US geography.

Eventually Alaska got too nauseous, threw Mexico back up and crawled back on top of Canada.

What a lot of people don’t realize though is what made Alaska so sick wasn’t Mexico, it was that Alaska mistook Texas for part of Mexico and took both Mexico and Texas in one bite, and it was only the extreme toxicity of Texas that made Alaska so queasy. Mexico was fine chilling inside Alaska. Alaskans and Mexicans had even taken to calling it “Mexicalaska”.