
A history of Vinland
It’s Leif Erikson Day, a day to learn about, and marvel at, the story of this Viking explorer, born in Iceland and thought to have set foot on the North American continent a good 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Want proof? Head to Newfoundland, Canada, where today’s photo was taken. Archaeologists discovered the remnants of a Viking outpost on the island’s north coast in 1960. L’Anse aux Meadows, as it’s now known, is a historic site open to the public, and the only solid evidence that Vikings were the first Europeans to land in North America, which they called Vinland.

An infrared image of the Orion Nebula