Link: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10278643

According to The Economist, a good graphic can tell a story, bring a lump to the throat, even change policies.

This article presents three remarkable charts that broke new ground in the graphic depiction of data:

Florence Nightingale's chart displaying the causes of soldiers' deaths during the Crimea War; Charles Minard's 1861 chart--as poignant today as it was a century and a half ago--telling the statistical story of Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812, a graphic Edward Tufte (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) calls "the best statistical graphic ever drawn"; and an 1821 chart by William Playfair, plotting the cost of wheat against average workingclass wages over time.