CHRISTOPHER WHO?:

Vikings from Greenland -- the first Europeans to arrive in the Americas -- lived in a village in Canada's Newfoundland exactly 1,000 years ago, according to research published Wednesday.

Scientists have known for many years that Vikings -- a name given to the Norse by the English they raided -- built a village at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland around the turn of the millennium. But a study published in Nature is the first to pinpoint the date of the Norse occupation.

The explorers -- up to 100 people, both women and men -- felled trees to build the village and to repair their ships, and the new study fixes a date they were there by showing they cut down at least three trees in the year 1021 -- at least 470 years before Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492.

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