Textbooks tells us that Christopher Columbus discovered America. However I cannot stop wondering about random explorers who navigated to Greenland from Britain and then wondered off to Canada. In the same sense, I’m wondering if other explorers, Europeans, got to the USA by first going to Greenland, then Canada, and finally USA. The distance seems a lot smaller and I’m sure there were peoples who tried this before Chris.
Yes, there were Norse settlements in the Americas about 500 years before Columbus. You may be interested in this section of our FAQ.