İzmir Province (Turkish: İzmir ili) is a province of Turkey in western Anatolia on the Aegean coast, whose capital is the city of İzmir. On the west it is surrounded by the Aegean sea, and it encloses the Gulf of İzmir. Its area is 11,973 km.², population 3.948.848 (2010 tüik census). The population was 3,370,866 in 2000. Neighbouring provinces are Balıkesir on the north, Manisa on the east, and Aydın on the south. The traffic code of the province is 35.

The main rivers of the province are Küçük Menderes river, Koca Çay (with Güzelhisar dam), and Bakır Çay.

İzmir Province is divided into 30 districts (metro districts are bold):

Of these, Balçova, Bayraklı, Bornova, Buca, Çiğli, Gaziemir, Güzelbahçe, Karabağlar, Karşıyaka, Konak, and Narlıdere are core districts, making up the city of İzmir.

The area was first settled by local Anatolians, milleninum later Ionians in about the 11th century BC who established the League of Ionia. It was later conquered by the Persians, retaken by the Greeks, before being subsumed into the Roman Empire. After the split of the Roman Empire, the area became part of what is now called the Byzantine Empire until conquered by the Ottoman Turks in the 14th century. Following the First World War the province was ceded to Greece, but was retaken by the forces of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the Turkish War of Independence. As a result of the Treaty of Lausanne all Greek Orthodox inhabitants of the province had to leave, and İzmir Province was incorporated into the modern republic of Turkey.

Coordinates: 38°25′19″N 27°07′44″E / 38.422°N 27.129°E / 38.422; 27.129

Izmir (Turkish: İzmir) is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.95 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey. Izmir metropolitan area extends along the outlying waters of the Gulf of İzmir and inland to the north across Gediz River's delta, to the east along an alluvial plain created by several small streams and to a slightly more rugged terrain in the south. The ancient city was known as Smyrna, and the city was generally referred to as Smyrna in English, until the Turkish Postal Services Law of 1930 made "Izmir" the internationally recognized name.

The city of Izmir is composed of several metropolitan districts. Of these, Konak district corresponds to historical Izmir, this district's area having constituted the "Izmir Municipality" (Turkish: İzmir Belediyesi) area until 1984, Konak until then having been a name for a central neighborhood around Konak Square, still the core of the city. With the constitution of the "Greater Izmir Metropolitan Municipality" (Turkish: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi), the city of Izmir became a compound bringing together initially nine, and since recently eleven metropolitan districts, namely Balçova, Bayraklı, Bornova, Buca, Çiğli, Gaziemir, Güzelbahçe, Karabağlar, Karşıyaka, Konak and Narlıdere. Almost each of these settlements are former district centers or neighborhoods which stood on their own and with their own distinct features and temperament. In an ongoing processus, the Mayor of Izmir was also vested with authority over the areas of additional districts reaching from Aliağa in the north to Selçuk in the south, bringing the number of districts to be considered as being part of Izmir to twenty-one under the new arrangements, two of these having been administratively included in Izmir only partially.

Thomas Cook (22 November 1808 – 18 July 1892) of Melbourne, Derbyshire, England founded the travel agency that in 2007 became Thomas Cook Group.

Thomas Cook was born to John and Elizabeth Cook, who lived at 9 Quick Close in the village of Melbourne, Derbyshire. The couple's first child, he was named after Elizabeth's father, Thomas Perkins. John Cook died when Thomas was three years old, and his mother remarried later that same year.

At the age of 10, Cook started working as an assistant to a local market gardener for a wage of six pence a week. At the age of 14, he secured an apprenticeship with John Pegg, and spent five years as a cabinet maker.

He was brought up as a strict Baptist, and joined his local Temperance Society. In February 1826, Cook became a preacher, and toured the region as a village evangelist, distributing pamphlets, and occasionally working as a cabinet maker to earn money. After working as a part-time publisher of Baptist and Temperance pamphlets, he became a Baptist minister in 1828.