The longer I work in the field of information visualization, the more I come to appreciate the simplicity, versatility and effectiveness of basic bar charts. They are not attention grabbing, but by encoding the information on the most powerful visual channels (size and position, with color as an option) they are remarkably accurate. They can fit anywhere from primary elements in basic infographics to small-multiples bar chart tables, and work well in different orientations and aspect ratios.
While experimenting with the paper.js graphics library recently, I used bar charts to create this date/time bar chart clock. All of the bars will fill up completely at the end of the century. This seems like such a simple idea that I am sure that someone else must have done this before, but quite a few minutes of googling and flipping through books did not turn up anything. If you are aware of another variation on this date/time clock please contact me and let me know.