Vikings reached North America 500 years before Columbus, and left a campsite to prove it

In 1960, Norwegian explorers Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad found the remains of a Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland, complete with turf-walled buildings and iron rivets used in Viking-style ship repair. Radiocarbon and tree-ring dating later pinned the site to around 1021 AD, confirming sagas describing Leif Erikson's voyages to a land the Norse called Vinland roughly 470 years before Columbus reached the Caribbean.

— Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad, The Norse Discovery of America — Excavations 1960–1968