Steal someone's thunder
"To take credit for someone else's idea, or to upstage them."
In 1704 the playwright John Dennis invented a new stage device, a "mustard bowl" of wooden balls rolled together backstage, to simulate the sound of thunder for his play Appius and Virginia. The play flopped and closed almost immediately. Soon after, Dennis discovered the same theatre using his thunder technique for a production of Macbeth. Furious, he is reported to have stood up in the audience and shouted, "That is my thunder, by God; the villains will not play my play, but they steal my thunder!"
Sources: First recorded anecdote traced to Dennis via Joseph Addison and later cited by Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
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