  A new sample of very large angular size radio sources has been selected from
the 1.4 GHz VLA surveys: FIRST and NVSS. This sample will be very useful for an
observational constraint on the time evolution of double radio sources,
especially their size, predicted by numerous analytical models of such
evolution (cf. Introduction). In this paper we present radio and optical data
for a large fraction of the sample sources. They are: high-frequency VLA maps
with very weak radio cores detected, deep optical images showing the identified
faint host galaxies not visible on the DSS images, and optical spectra of the
identified galaxies brighter than about R ~ 18.5 mag taken with the McDonald
Observatory 2.1m telescope. For 15 galaxies (of which 4 do not belong to the
complete sample) the redshift has been determined. In the result, 44 per cent
of galaxies in the complete sample have redshift data (with one exception all
redshifts are less than 0.33), of which 70 per cent have a linear size
exceeding 1 Mpc. The photometric redshift estimates for other 11 galaxies with
19 mag<R<21.7 mag (0.3<z<0.5) predict their sizes much over 1 Mpc.
