Air cargo the area surrounding the city and thus land access. As this access was closed, in the so-called Berlin blockade, an airlift remained the only option to get increasingly urgent deliveries of food, coal, and other supplies to West Berlin. Over 330 days to 12 May 1949 a total of 2.26 million tons of cargo were airlifted to Berlin, an average of 6,800 tons a day, 80% by the US and 20% by the UK. Although freight traffic developed modestly, reaching only 800,000 tonnes worldwide by the mid-1950s, the world economy was hitting its post-war stride. Germany and Japan were emerging
Coal Exchange (London) this period, London was heated almost entirely by coal. By 1848, approximately 3.5 million tons of coal was being transported each year from the coalfields in Northumberland and Durham to London, with over 12,000 shiploads carried on nearly 3,000 vessels. The coal trade was also an important source of tax revenue for the city. The duty on coal funded Wren's rebuilding of more than fifty city churches and St Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London in 1666, and also funded for other building works in the metropolis, such as the Thames Embankment. Historically, coal taxes (metage, payable on