In 1504 a fire destroyed a large part of the city, whereupon King Alexander Jagiellon suspended taxation for its inhabitants for ten years.
During the Great Northern War the town and church were ransacked by Saxon and Swedish troops, including a short but devastating stay by king Charles XI of Sweden and his mounted troops in 1704, recorded by the parish priest of the Saint Jacob church.
In 1815, upon defeat of Napoleon town fell to the Russians and became part of the newly formed Congress Poland.
In 1869, Russian occupying authorities took away Głowno's town rights, a strong punitive measure intended as a humiliation for its citizens' participation in the January Uprising.
In 1903, the railway connection between Warsaw and Łódź was built through Głowno, therewith representing a positive factor for the economy.
With the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, the area was a scene of the Battle of Bzura and some fighting occurred in Głowno vicinity.
During the occupation numerous acts of Polish resistance, Armia Krajowa etc., occurred in Głowno including the clandestine execution of a Roman Catholic priest who worked as an informant for the Nazi police.
[4] By the time Nazi-occupied Poland was liberated, not a single Jewish ghetto remained on Polish lands.
[6] These Poles were mainly old people and women with children, many were sent to nearby villages, while over 1,000 stayed in the town and gmina as of mid-November 1944.
[6] Soviet Red Army took Głowno in January 1945, and it was then restored to Poland, however with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which then stayed in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s.
In the 1990s, under the Third Polish Republic, town and the inhabitants at first prospered, however plagued by quality of life crimes, especially its textile and automotive factories and manufactures were expanding, but this boom suffered collapse by the end of the decade, most of the textile manufacturing in bankruptcy and factories facing closures etc.
Głowno is located in the Central Polish Lowlands (Nizina Polska), within the smaller geographical area of Łowicz-Błońska Plain at the confluence of three small rivers: Mroga, Mrożyca, and Brzuśnia.
The city's elevation is from 119.3 to 145.9 meters, the higher number belongs to the northern part of the town, above sea level.
Głowno is divided into districts, including Osiny, Huta Józefów, Borówka-Otwock, Kopernika, Zabrzeźnia, Cichorajka, Zakopane and Swoboda.