AUGUST 17, 2022 - On the August 14, 2022 season finale of Who Do You Think You Are? Star Trek star Zachary Quinto, who played Mr. Spock in the 2009 - 2016 revival films, was shocked when he discovered a Star Trek connection to an ancestor of his.

His maternal great-grandfather, P.J. McArdle, who had the P.J. McArdle Roadway named after him in Pittsburg, PA, as a member of the Official Organ of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers, wrote letters in a journal once a month. One sent in 1899 described the new roadway and what it would do for the populace. He ended it with the phrase “May it live long and prosper.”

Quinto was blown away that 112 years before he landed the iconic role in the reboot series, his great-grandfather was using a ‘Vulcan’ expression. “Whoa, what?” exclaimed Quinto during the show. “That’s crazy! That’s insane!”

However, the expression is not as mind-blowingly bizarre as it might appear at first glance. Historian Edward S. Slavishak explained, “That line was a famous line from a stage play of Rip Van Winkle. So P.J. likely either saw the stage play or, even more likely, it was something he heard from his fellow workers. This was as close as you get as a catchphrase.” In any event, Quinto’s reaction to seeing it was “highly logical,'“ as only a history buff would have immediately known that.

So, is ‘live long and prosper’ a case of life imitating art, art imitating life, or maybe, have Vulcans been around longer than we thought?

Who Do You Think You Are? Airs Sundays at 7 PM on NBC. To read the whole story and view a clip of Quinto’s discovery from the program, head over to Yahoo Entertainment.