Flights

ANOTHER COOK

In 1841, Thomas set out on foot to a meeting of the Temperance Society – for he was a great advocate of the temperate mind – from his native Loughborough to Leicester, eleven miles removed. With him went several other gentlemen. Along the way, which was long and tiring, this Cook had an idea – it now seems so strange that no one had ever thought of it before, but that is of course the famous simplicity of brilliant ideas – namely, to rent a railway carriage to transport all the travellers together on the next trip.

A month later he managed to ready his first excursion for several hundred people (it is unknown whether all of them were heading to the Temperance Society, however). And so the first travel agency was born.

Thomas Cook and James Cook: two of the chefs who cooked up our reality.