Heard on the Hill: KU Scuba Club finds a beloved hat; KU shows off aerial photos; youth blogger coming to Dole Institute on Monday

Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• Here’s a nice little story that involves a fishing trip at a private pond north of Lawrence and Bob Tucker’s hat.

It’s a safari-style hat covered in decades worth of collectible pins from various Olympics along with various Boy Scout events, too.

The wind, behaving as the wind is wont to do, decided to blow the decades-old hat into the lake.

Bob and his wife Donna, who live in Wichita, wrote to the Journal-World recently to let us know that the KU Scuba Club — whom they reached through their daughter-in-law — had volunteered to assist with the search and managed to find the hat after only 45 minutes or so of searching.

And yes, you read that right — the university that’s situated about as far away from either major coastline as possible has a scuba club. Here’s its Facebook page. Jake Hopkins, the group’s president, led the search.

Though the message we received was signed by both Bob and Donna, I have a feeling Donna had the most editorial control.

“Jake and his team most likely have saved my sanity in not having to hear about the traumatic loss of that felt hat,” the message read.

• I often hear of helicopters flying over the KU campus to take aerial photography of the campus, but I rarely see the results.

KU, however, published 10 photos on its Facebook page, and they’re pretty good stuff.

• The Dole Institute will bring its series on the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Soviet Union to a close next Monday with Arzu Geybullayeva, a youth activist and blogger.

She’ll talk about the role youth activists played in the “Color Revolutions,” that sprung up in several former Soviet states and countries in the Balkans region of Europe.

She’ll be speaking at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Dole Institute.

Here’s a look at her blog, Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines, and she’s on Twitter, too.

• I’m gearing up for the annual news slowdown around the Thanksgiving holiday, but you should still keep sending your tips to ahyland@ljworld.com anyway. Especially so, even.