Clint Eastwood - Developed his distinctive manner of speech by studying the breathy whisper of Marilyn Monroe.

The WWI German Army - Kaiser Wilhelm, the leader of Germany, was so impressed with the efficiency of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show when it toured Europe in the early 1900s, that he modeled his army on it.

The Chevrolet Insignia - Billy Durant, founder of General Motors, liked the wallpaper pattern in a Paris hotel so much that he ripped off a piece and brought it back to Detroit to copy as the symbol for his new Chevrolet car.

The Queens - In a deck of cards the Queens were originally depictions of Queen Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII of England.

Lucy - Perhaps the most famous human fossil ever discovered. The bones were dug up in Ethiopia in 1975 - at the time, the oldest human remains in the world (3.2 million years old). They were named after the song playing on a tape recorder at the time - “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

Fat Albert - The slow-witted, good-natured cartoon character was modeled after Bill Cosby’s dyslexic brother, Russell.

Romeo and Juliet - They were real lovers in Verona, Italy in the early 1300s - and they really did die for each other. The story was passed from writer to writer until Shakespeare found it, apparently in a 1562 poem by Arthur Brooke, called Romeo and Juliet, containing a rare example of loves constancei…