You are cordially invited to the wedding of Kelly Hildebrandt and Kelly Hildebrandt? You may not be personally invited, but it's true that the two Kelly Hildebrandts are getting married. The female Hildebrandt is from Florida, and she fell in love with a guy in Texas with the same name!

"I was like, 'I wonder if there's any other Kelly Hildebrandts on Facebook'," she explained. "So, I searched my own name and he's the only one that came up. And actually, in the picture, he didn't have his shirt on, and I'm like, 'oh, he's cute!'"

And the Kelly in Texas was also intrigued.

"She started off, 'hey, I see we have the same name, and I thought it was kinda cool, so I wanted to say hi, I guess'. Lots of laughs," he said.

Three weeks after their first online encounter, Kelly, the boy from Texas, decided to fly to south Florida, and see Kelly, the girl, in person.

The two will be wed in October. Link -via YesButNoButYes

Some of the most notorious discoveries and inventions arose by accident, or more commonly, were developed for uses other than what they ended up doing. Listverse looks at ten such products, including trinitrotoluene, a chemical discovered by Joseph Wilbrand in 1863 and meant for use as a yellow dye. With the name shortened to TNT, the explosive was used to wage both world wars. Link -via the Presurfer

In August of 1985, Ebony magazine printed an article called Portraits of the Stars: What They May Look Like In The Year 2000. The magazine commissioned Chicago artist Nathan Wright to create the pictures. One of the celebrities is a handsome man that looks vaguely familiar.

Michael Jackson: At 40, he will have aged gracefully and will have a handsome, more mature look. In number, his fans will have grown tenfold by the year 2000.

There's something to be said for aging gracefully. Link -via J-Walk Blog

A century and a half ago, 20 people died and many other became ill because their local candy distributor knew a bargain when he saw one.

On October 23, 1858, William “Humbug Billy” Hardaker, sold peppermint lozenges to the good people of Bradford, England, as he usually did. This particular Saturday he had the good luck to buy his batch of mints at discount because of their substandard appearance. By the time he fell sick that afternoon, he had sold enough lozenges to satisfy some 200 peoples’ sweet tooth. The next day, still ill, Hardaker had to explain to the police why everyone who ate his candy was either getting sick or dying.

The answer makes you glad we have laws about food ingredients these days. This story is part of 5 Disasters That Could Have Been Avoided. Link -Thanks, Sami!

(College Humor link)
Darth Vader and his Storm Troopers break it down at the dance-off show at Disney's annual Star Wars Weekends. See the entire show at YouTube. -via Buzzfeed

It had to be done. Threadless member Oxen married two recent internet memes, the Three Wolf Moon Shirt and Keyboard Cat together in this t-shirt design. Link -via Everlasting Blort

In an update on the story about the new military robot in development that refuels itself by consuming biomass, Robot Technologies and Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. issued a press release denying that its robot would consume human bodies. Wired published the release, which says in part:

RTI’s patent pending robotic system will be able to find, ingest and extract energy from biomass in the environment. Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes “human bodies,” the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips – small, plant-based items for which RTI’s robotic technology is designed to forage. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI.

Link -via Digg

(YouTube link)

Veteran journalist and news anchorman Walter Cronkite died today. Often called "the most trusted man in America", Cronkite set a high standard for television journalism in the 20th century. He was 92 years old.

Mr. Cronkite anchored the “CBS Evening News” from 1962 to 1981, at a time when television became the dominant medium of the United States. He figuratively held the hand of the American public during the civil-rights movement, the space race, the Vietnam war and the impeachment of Richard Nixon. During his tenure, network newscasts were expanded to 30 minutes from 15.

And that's the way it is, July 17, 2009.

Link -via YesButNoButYes

See also: A collection of memorable reports from Walter Cronkite.

Forty years later, you can still see the lunar modules, and even footprints, left on the moon by the Apollo missions. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO took new pictures between July 11th and 15th.

"Not only do these images reveal the great accomplishments of Apollo, they also show us that lunar exploration continues," said LRO project scientist Richard Vondrak of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "They demonstrate how LRO will be used to identify the best destinations for the next journeys to the moon."

NASA officials say the next round of photographs, to be taken during the final mapping orbit, will have even greater resolution. Link -via Bad Astronomy Blog, where these pictures caused great excitement.

(image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University)

Nine squirrels regularly visit this home in Santa Monica, Cailfornia. The resident sets out toys and other objects for the squirrels to interact with, then trains a webcam on them for your entertainment. This site has both live streaming video and a slideshow of highlights of the squirrels in action. Link -via the Presurfer

17-year-old Zac Sunderland arrived home in California Thursday after a year of sailing around the world solo in his 36-foot sailboat named the Intrepid. He is now the youngest person to ever pull off such a stunt. Sunderland covered 27,500 miles and dealt with pirates and severe storms.

"The hardest constantly was the tiredness," he said. "I mean, you get over the loneliness, but tiredness, it's an ongoing thing. Half the time I haven't slept in 48 hours and it's just hard to get enough rest."

Sunderland said he made some good contacts along the way.

"It's interesting just thinking back to the different places in the world because I have so many friends in different parts of the world that are like family, you know, and all these different experiences," he said.

Link to story. Link to website. -via J-Walk Blog

(image credit: Lisa Gizara)

Mawgan spent a long time scribbling over a cute kitten calendar a relative had received as a gift. Now he/she has scanned the best of the resulting works for all of us to enjoy. Link -via b3ta

Can you tell your Harry Potter characters from hideous skin diseases? That's the challenge today in the Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss. Despite a slight knowledge of Latin, I only scored 58%, which is in the range of complete chance. Surely you will do better! Link

A mysterious mass of black goo has been observed oozing through the Chucki sea off the coast of Alaska. It was first observed neat Wainwright and moved toward Barrow, where samples were collected for testing.

Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.

"It's certainly biological," Hasenauer said. "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.

"It's definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it's some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism."

No one in the area remembers ever seeing anything like the sea blob before. http://www.adn.com/2835/story/864687.html -via reddit

Update: The tests are back. The blob has been identified as algae.

National Geographic takes on conspiracy theorists over the Apollo moon landing. Each accusation is countered by spaceflight historian Roger Launius of the Smithsonian Institution or astronomer Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy Blog.

You can tell Apollo was faked because ... only two astronauts walked on the moon at a time, yet in photographs such as this one where both are visible, there is no sign of a camera. So who took the picture?

The fact of the matter is ... the cameras were mounted to the astronauts' chests, said astronomer Phil Plait, author of the award-winning blog Bad Astronomy and president of the James Randi Educational Foundation.

In the picture above, Plait notes, "you can see [Neil's] arms are sort of at his chest. That's where the camera is. He wasn't holding it up to his visor."

Link