  The spin of the final black hole in the coalescence of nonspinning black
holes is determined by the ``residual'' orbital angular momentum of the binary.
This residual momentum consists of the orbital angular momentum that the binary
is not able to shed in the process of merging. We study the angular momentum
radiated, the spin of the final black hole and the gravitational bursts in a
series of orbits ranging from almost direct infall to numerous orbits before
infall that exhibit multiple bursts of radiation in the merger process. We show
that the final black hole gets a maximum spin parameter $a/M_h \le 0.78$, and
this maximum occurs for initial orbital angular momentum $L \approx M^2_h$.
