What People Ask About Your State

For their afternoon map today, mental_floss did a Google query for each state, asking “Why does [state] …” and labeled each state with, I presume, the top autocomplete. With a caveat.

To stay on topic, we disregarded questions that referred to the state's sports team instead of the state itself (except for Alabama, because apparently that's all they search for). It's also worth noting for Georgia that the Googlers probably meant "counties" instead of "countries." Maybe?

You can see the large version here. Maybe you can answer the question for your state. Kentucky and Tennessee have two time zones because they are horizontal states, and the time line as continued from the states above and below cuts them in half. It would be just weird to move the time line border so far in either direction.

(Image credit: Chloe Effron)

To set the stage, New Mexico's views towards Texas started a long time ago. The Republic of Texas laid claim to part of northern NM, and in 1841 sent a force to try and secure the land and gain control of the Santa Fe Trail. Then during the Civil War, Confederate troops - mostly Texans - tried to take over the state, and briefly held Albuquerque and Santa Fe. (Arizona Territory, which had split a few years earlier from NM, side with the Confederates.) US was also suspicious about New Mexican statehood, in part because of the long Spanish culture dating back to the 1600s. There were many questions about if the NM population had "assimilated" enough to be US state. Imagine the resentment which might occur when a New Mexican-born American, who can trace their local family ancestry back to Imperial Spanish colonization in the 1600s, and who grew up in a Spanish speaking household, is called an immigrant. Texans seem to go out of their way to prove they are more American than the rest of Americans, and that cultural difference might help antagonize things. And there are still problems by the US breaking its treaty obligations to honor Spanish land grants. Quoting the 'Milagro Beanfield War' - “The war never ended in 1848”.

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