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
Sixteen Tons Another line came from their father, a coal miner, who would say: "I can't afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store." A 1955 version recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford reached number one in the "Billboard" charts, while another version by Frankie Laine 1956 was released only in Western Europe, where it gave Ford's version competition. On March 25, 2015, Ford's version of the song was inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry. The sole authorship of "Sixteen Tons" is attributed to Merle Travis on all recordings beginning with Travis's own 1946 record and is