• Pullen Memorial Baptist Church is the first Baptist church in the Southern United States to have chosen an openly gay lead cleric?

Facts on topics related to Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

North Carolina

• "Carolina in My Mind", James Taylor's nostalgic 1968 song about growing up in North Carolina, was written in London and on the Mediterranean islands of Formentera and Ibiza?
• English-born architect William Nichols designed and built statehouses for North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi in the early 19th century?
• hatchlings of the Cape Fear Shiner, a critically endangered minnow endemic to central North Carolina, feed off of their egg yolk for five days after they hatch?
• North Carolina furniture maker Thomas Day employed both African-American slaves as well as white apprentices in his Caswell County workshop, though he was himself a free person of color?
• North Carolina-based author Perry Deane Young's first Vietnam War article for UPI was about the Tet Offensive, which began the night he arrived in Saigon?
• Daniel Boyd is accused of leading a jihadist terrorist cell in North Carolina?
• Dismal Swamp Canal which runs along the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina is the oldest continually operating man-made canal in the United States?
• Elk Knob State Park, a state park in Watauga County, North Carolina, was established due to a grassroots movement to protect Elk Knob from housing development?
• Flat Top Manor, built by textile industrialist Moses H. Cone in 1900, gets nearly 250,000 visitors annually as the main feature of the Moses H. Cone Memorial Park in North Carolina?
• James Moore, hero of the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, was one of only five generals from North Carolina to serve in the Continental Army?

Raleigh, North Carolina

• Clarence Lightner was the first African-American elected mayor of any metropolitan Southern United States city?
• Lunsford Lane (pictured) was a slave from North Carolina who bought his freedom, but was tarred and feathered when he returned to his hometown of Raleigh?
• in 1865, Henry Martin Tupper founded the first historically black college in the American South, Shaw University of Raleigh, North Carolina?
• the Long View Center (pictured) in Raleigh, North Carolina is used as a church, concert venue, office building, and art gallery?
• the St. Paul A.M.E. Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, founded in 1884, was the first independent African-American church in Raleigh?

Capital punishment in the United States

• Charles Brooks, Jr., was the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States?
• Hastings Wise is the sixth person to waive appeals of the death sentence in South Carolina since the state resumed executions after Gregg v. Georgia?
  
• James Autry received a stay on his execution in October 1983 after the needles for his lethal injection had been inserted into his arms?
• Luis Ramirez was the 15th person executed in 2005 in the U.S. state of Texas?
• Marlin Gray was executed on October 26 for his part in pushing two women off the Chain of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi River in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1991?
• a person must be deemed competent to receive the death penalty in order to be executed, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ford v. Wainwright?
• as of 2005 James Neil Tucker was the last person executed in the United States using the electric chair?
• at 67 years old, Elias Syriani was the oldest person executed in the United States since James Hubbard was executed by Alabama at the age of 74 in 2004?
• on 14 August 1936 Rainey Bethea was hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky, thus becoming the last person to be publicly executed in the United States?
• the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a mental illness is a mitigating factor in death penalty cases, but the Supreme Court of California in one case ruled that mental illness is an aggravating factor?

President of the United States

• actress Dorothy Kilgallen, who claimed to have information about the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, died under suspicious circumstances?
• Kentucky political boss Thomas Rhea was instrumental in getting delegates from Southern states to vote to nominate Franklin D. Roosevelt for president at the 1932 Democratic National Convention?
• political illustrator Steve Brodner has caricatured American Presidents going back to Richard Nixon?
• President of the United States James A. Garfield knew both Latin and Greek, and could write both simultaneously with separate hands?
• President Barack Obama called to congratulate baseball pitcher Mark Buehrle after his perfect game?
• President Benjamin Harrison's 1890 speech at the Coal Palace in Ottumwa, Iowa, was drowned out abruptly by noise from an indoor waterfall?
• U.S. President Benjamin Harrison appointed James R. Tanner Commissioner of the Pension Bureau in 1889, but had to remove him six months later because he vastly exceeded his office's budget?
• U.S. President Chester A. Arthur, a known Stalwart, signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, a piece of legislation that was drawn up by the rival Half-Breeds?
• U.S. President LBJ once battered Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson over Canada's Vietnam War policy?
• U.S. President Ronald Reagan timed his first proclamation of National Sanctity of Human Life Day to coincide with the anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in the Roe v. Wade abortion case?

Iraq War

• 198 people were killed in an insurgent uprising in Mosul during the Iraq War?
• Christopher Buckley's novel Florence of Arabia was an homage to Fern Holland, one of the first U.S. civilians to be killed in the Iraq War?
• Chenowth Advanced Light Strike Vehicles were used by United States Navy SEALs in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as during the Gulf War?
• Heath Calhoun and Andy Soule, both double-leg amputees due to wounds received in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively, will represent the United States at the 2010 Winter Paralympics?
• Karl Zinsmeister, a U.S. journalist and the new top domestic policy advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush, wrote a book-length Marvel comic book on the Iraq War?
• Phil Packer (pictured), who was rendered paraplegic in 2008 by a rocket attack while serving in the Iraq War, has since rowed the English Channel, climbed El Capitan, and completed two London Marathons?
• Major Megan McClung, the first female United States Marine Corps officer killed in combat in Iraq, organized and competed in the first satellite running of the Marine Corps Marathon in Iraq?
• although British Prime Minister Edward Heath announced in 1972 that hooding was illegal, British soldiers were engaging in the practice in the Iraq War?
• retired General Volney F. Warner has publicly criticized the Iraq War; his granddaughter, First Lieutenant Laura Margaret Walker, served in Afghanistan and was the first female graduate of West Point to die in combat?
• the counter-insurgency strategy of clear and hold, widely implemented in the Vietnam War and elsewhere, has also been used extensively in the Iraq War?