"Python's predecessor, ABC, was inspired by
SETL -- Lambert Meertens spent a year with the SETL group at NYU
before coming up with the final ABC design!"
--Guido van Rossum
I have heard that ABC was worked on by Van Rossum, and that it influenced a lot of his design choices in python.
What you may be misremembering is the fact that Smalltalk was a profound influence on Ruby.
Also heavily influenced by C, its first implementation language. Many modules and interfaces are thin wrappers to C. Think os, socket, select, string method names, etc.