Leif Eriksson is now regarded as the first discoverer of America. He was the first European to explore what is now eastern Canada, from the Arctic to New Brunswick, around 1000 CE. He made these voyages nearly five hundred years before Christopher Columbus’s journey across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492. Today, efforts by archaeologists to conclusively establish the location of Leif’s short-lived base in Vinland are ongoing.

Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia