The LIGO and Virgo detectors have recently directly observed gravitational
waves from several mergers of pairs of stellar-mass black holes, as well as
from one merging pair of neutron stars. These observations raise the hope that
compact object mergers could be used as a probe of stellar and binary
evolution, and perhaps of stellar dynamics. This colloquium-style article
summarizes the existing observations, describes theoretical predictions for
formation channels of merging stellar-mass black-hole binaries along with their
rates and observable properties, and presents some of the prospects for
gravitational-wave astronomy.Comment: Colloquium-style article solicited by Reviews of Modern Physics;
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