Last week, Tuesday, July 5, marked 170 years since the historic day when Thomas Cook, founder of the worldwide Thomas Cook holidays travel company, conducted his very first escorted tour – an 11-mile train journey from Leicester to Loughborough.

He could never have imagined that, on that day in 1841, that modest journey to take around 500 people to a temperance demonstration would be a turning point in history – the very first step in creating a global travel organisation that now carries more than 22 million customers a year and employs over 31,000 people worldwide.

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