Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first written evidence of the Odia language appears in the Urajam inscription of 1051 CE. This royal charter was issued by the Eastern Ganga dynasty and predates the standardization of many other major Indian languages.
The poet Sarala Das translated the great Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata into the vernacular tongue in the fourteenth century. He created the Sarala Mahabharata which infused the ancient story with the local spirit to make it accessible to common people.
Pandit Kanti Chandra Bhattacharya published a pamphlet titled Odia Ekti Swatantray Bhasha Noi in 1861. He argued that Odia was not an independent language and suggested the abolition of all Odia vernacular schools.
Fakir Mohan Senapati, Radhanath Ray, and Madhusudan Rao transformed Odia literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Senapati wrote the novel Chha Mana Atha Guntha while Ray and Rao pushed the boundaries of poetic expression and prose.
The Odia diaspora numbers around 50 million speakers worldwide today. Significant communities exist in the United States, Canada, Australia, and England alongside other global regions.