The Swedish Academy (Swedish: Svenska Akademien), founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, comprise the highest Swedish language authority. Outside Scandinavia, it is best known as the body that chooses the laureates for the annual Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in memory of the donor Alfred Nobel.
In Swedish history, the Age of Liberty (Swedish: Frihetstiden) was a period that saw parliamentary governance, increasing civil rights, and the decline of the Swedish Empire that began with the adoption of the Instrument of Government in 1719 and ended with the Revolution of 1772, Gustav III's self-coup. This shift of power from the monarch to parliament was a direct effect of the Great Northern War.
Suffrage under the parliamentary government was not universal. Although the taxed peasantry was represented in the Parliament, its influence was disproportionately small, and commoners without taxed property had no suffrage at all.
The Botanical Garden of Uppsala University (Swedish: Botaniska trädgården) is the principal botanical garden in the city of Uppsala, Sweden. It is situated near to Uppsala Castle and belongs to Uppsala University, having been created on land donated to the university by King Gustav III in 1787. The orangery now houses the Linneanum museum and is open to the public alongside the University's other botanical gardens, the Linnaean Garden and Linnaeus Hammarby.
The original Botanical Garden was founded in 1655 by Olaus Rudbeck, making it the oldest botanical garden in Sweden. Having been damaged in the 1702 Uppsala fire, it fell into neglect before it was redesigned and renovated by Carl Linnaeus, a professor at the University. Under the leadership of Linnaeus, the garden's collection grew massively and it became one of the most prominent botanical gardens in the world. The original site is maintained by Uppsala University to Linnaeus' recorded design to this day.
Un ballo in maschera ('A Masked Ball') is an 1859 opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The text, by Antonio Somma, was based on Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's 1833 five act opera, Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué.
The plot concerns the assassination in 1792 of King Gustav III of Sweden who was shot, as the result of a political conspiracy, while attending a masked ball, dying of his wounds thirteen days later.