Who was the first explorer to sail to North America?

The story behind the answer

Leif Erikson is considered the first known European explorer to reach North America, around the year 1000, nearly 500 years before Columbus. Norse sagas describe his voyage from Greenland to a land he called Vinland, and archaeological evidence at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada, confirms a Viking settlement from that era.

Remember: “Leif the Lucky landed first.” Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492, Amerigo Vespucci explored South America’s coasts later (giving the continents their name), and Magellan’s expedition began the first circumnavigation decades after. Leif’s journey shows that transatlantic contact predated Columbus, while Indigenous peoples had lived in the Americas for thousands of years before any European arrival.