Anchorage daily news

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - To much of the nation, Ted Stevens was the crotchety senator who famously referred to the Internet as "a series of tubes" and fought to build the "Bridge to Nowhere." But to his constituents in Alaska, he was "Uncle Ted," the state's political patriarch who for four decades reliably delivered billions in federal dollars for the highways, pipelines and ports that helped move his sparsely populated state into the future.

Nov. 18, 1923 - Born Theodore Fulton Stevens in Indianapolis.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Former Sen. Ted Stevens, an uncompromising advocate for Alaska for four decades who spearheaded scores of expensive projects to one of the nation's most sparsely populated states, including the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," has died in a plane crash.