The United States in the 16th century

The United States in the 16th century is referred to as los años perdidos, since the way history is taught in the United States, nothing happened between 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue to "discover" the New World, and either the English settlement of Jamestown in 1607 or the Pilgrims' arrival in Plimoth, Massachusetts in 1620.

However:

Numerous settlements which exist to this day were founded by the French, and more notably, the Spanish. As a result of this, there are people in the south-western and south-eastern US who can trace their immigrant roots to generations before the Puritans yearned for the freedom to persecute people for their religion freely, whose first language is Spanish, who live in a Spanish-named town, and who are yet "native-born" American citizens. (In fact, the oldest continually-inhabited European settlement in the US is St. Augustine, FL, which was settled in the late 1500s.)

Adapted from a deleted RationalWiki article