1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Radom (town)

RADOM, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, 100 m. by rail S. from Warsaw. Pop. 28,749, half of whom were Jews. It is one of the best built provincial towns of Poland. The church of St Wlaclaw, contemporary with the foundation of the town, was transformed by the Austrians into a storehouse, and subsequently by the Russian government into a military prison. The old castle is in ruins, and the old Bernardine monastery is used as barracks. Radom has several iron and agricultural machinery works and tanneries. In 1216 it occupied the site of what is now Old Radom. New Radom was founded in 1340 by Casimir the Great, king of Poland. Here Jadwiga was elected queen of Poland in 1382, and here too in 1401 the first act relating to the union of Poland with Lithuania was signed; the seim or diet of 1505, where the organic law of Poland was sworn by the king, was also held at Radom. Several great fires, and still more the Swedish war of 1701–7, were the ruin of the old city. After the third partition of Poland in 1795 it fell under Austrian rule; it was in 1815 annexed to Russia, and became chief town of the province of Sandomir.