RADOM  , a

town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, roo 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 .